The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Terrifying Real Life Paranormal Stories to Fall Asleep To (Vol 8)

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

This episode was released to Youtube a few months ago, however due to some technical issues I was never able to get it up on the podcast feed at the time. While I work on the next mammoth episode on The Warrens I thought some of you might enjoy this compilation of creepy stories that I was sent over the last year or so. There will be an ad break after the intro but after that the 4 hours of stories will play ad-free. The door locks behind you. The fire flickers in the dim light. You’ve made it here—your one safe place amidst the horrors that wait beyond these walls. In this four-hour collection of true paranormal encounters, nine brand-new stories join eerie tales from Night Drive Paranormal, all told with the comforting stillness of a Resident Evil-style save room. No ad breaks. No sudden interruptions. Just you, the fire… and the whispers of those who have come before. New episodes of Night Drive Paranormal are uploaded to The Tape Library podcast feed so no need to click anywhere. But if you want to check it out on YouTube you can find it here - https://www.youtube.com/@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. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Artgrid, Epidemic Sounds, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome to Scary Stories to Fall Asleep to 01:52 Press Start 02:22 The Chocolate Shop 11:35 The Suit 16:01 Sneak In 22:30 The Anniversary 27:19 Things 35:22 The Dog Walker 38:14 It Comes For Children 45:39 Antique 48:42 Did It Really Happen? 54:17 Me & My Shadow 57:43 The Coin 59:59 Shoes 1:06:02 Devil on my Shoulder 1:26:59 Lights in the Garden 1:31:06 Papa 1:38:35 Haunting in Texas 1:44:24 A Feeling 1:49:14 Chased 1:51:45 The Fort 1:56:36 Man & Woman 2:05:28 Bump in the Night 2:15:19 An Irish Castle 2:26:06 Man in the Mirror 2:29:38 Can I Come In? 2:38:38 The Spots 2:41:31 Shhh 2:44:15 The Bedroom 2:47:25 The Closet 2:49:32 A Shadow 2:54:13 New Orleans Is Haunted 3:00:12 The House On Village Green 3:06:50 The Black Dog 3:12:13 Back to the Forest 3:16:14 The Yellow Girl & The Crosses 3:44:34 End of Stories 3:59:41 Something is Wr0Ng Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the tape library. It's time for a long overdue episode of scary stories to fall asleep to. If you just want to skip to the stories, chapter times are available. But if you're new to one of these, I'll explain quickly. This video is a compilation of stories that I have been sent by listeners of the tape library over the last year. These videos are designed so that you can relax or even sleep with some creepy, real-life paranormal tales. For this reason, visuals, music and audio effects are kept to a minimum. The sounds of the fire will continue on after the stories end for a while.

There will be an ad break at the end of the intro, but after that there should not be another one until the end of the episode. So you shouldn't experience any interruptions. If you want to support me in making these, then please click like, and drop me a comment telling me where you are listening to this episode. These interactions really help me out and means I can keep these episodes. virtually ad-free. In a slight change to normal, this isn't just a compilation of older stories. The first nine stories are brand new, never heard before encounters. After that, I will be sharing stories from my second channel, Night Drive Paranormal. So if you want more real-life

paranormal stories every month, be sure to check Night Drive out too. There'll be a link below. Remember, whatever you choose to believe. The people who submitted these stories all claim, that their experiences really happened and they do not know how to explain it so it's time to enter the save room there's a typewriter in the corner if you need it but i know it's scary out there it's dangerous outside you are safe here a moment of respite so sit by the fire and stay as long as you want i've got plenty of ghost stories to share to keep us busy so let's get into them shall we I've been unsure whether to share my experiences, as I don't typically talk about them, but hopefully you may enjoy them. To add some perspective, I'm what I call an unwilling believer, which is why I appreciate the way you tell stories from a neutral perspective, leaving plenty of room to analyse and pick apart stories.

I believe because of my experiences, but I'm always seeking a rational explanation to debunk them. This is my story. My mother says I have always had odd things happen around me since the day she brought me home from hospital. She has multiple stories of me having strange interactions, everything from being repeatedly rocked as a baby by an unseen hand, to me keeping her up at night as a child, having conversations with long dead relatives, that I'd never met or heard of but could point out in a family album. I don't emphatically believe these, though. We are a Romani family, and as such my family is very superstitious and can sometimes exaggerate things.

That said, I cannot ignore my own experiences so easily. I was 20, and it was the year 2010. I lived in a quiet village in the New Forest, UK, as I have all my life. I had moved into my first place for my partner. I fell in love with it as soon as I laid eyes on it. an old small Victorian chocolate shop It even had the old painted Nestle advert on the wall Facing the roadside

It had been converted strangely As you entered you stepped into a square hallway The bedroom formerly the shop floor was on the left With the bathroom ahead To the right were the stairs leading up to the living room and kitchen The windows were all small top opening panes Barely wired enough to fit an arm through It sounds like a random detail, but it becomes important later.

We had a flemish giant rabbit named Buddy, bigger than a beagle or a staffy-sized dog, and he knew it. I'd had him for about five years at that point, and he was my best friend. Since the place was small, his dog crate had to be kept in the hallway, next to the stairs at night. Almost immediately, Buddy began frashing in his crate. He had never done this before. He bit the bars, yanking them hard. hard enough to make them twang as they snapped back. He kicked violently, sending crashing sounds echoing through the hall.

We assumed that the move had unsettled him. We gave him extra treats, hoping he'd adjust. He didn't. And if you've ever seen a horror film with an animal in it, you know this is the part where you think. Why didn't they pay more attention to the pet? As the nights went on, Buddy's distress only worsened. He became inconsolable

Until I gave in and let him sleep on the bed with us The change was instant He calmed down immediately and to my surprise Was better behaved than I expected Sleeping soundly through the night A few months passed One night I was home alone My partner worked at game

And was doing a midnight launch for the newest FIFA title I couldn't sleep without him there So Buddy and I sat upstairs watching TV He chewed happily on his newest toy, and then it happened. It felt like someone had poured freezing water over me. A cold dread filled my entire body in an instant. Next to me, Buddy dropped his toy. His ears flattened, and he stared intently, sighed on,

at the hallway with the stairs, the same hallway there had been his bedroom. I don't know how else to explain it, but a feeling of absolute hatred was radiating from the dark doorway. Even as I write this, my heart is pounding, remembering it. I've never been so afraid in my life. It was palpable, like standing in a room with someone who despised you, and they're making no effort to hide it.

Next to me, Buddy went berserk. He kicked and growled. If you've ever heard a rabbit growl, you know it's like a low electrical hum. He dashed around the room, trying to hide from whatever he sensed. Meanwhile, I sat frozen, too scared to even blink, staring into the darkness of the hallway, feeling as though it was staring back. My rational brain told me I was imagining things, but another louder voice inside me was screaming that I was in danger. With immense effort I forced my hand to move.

I grabbed my phone and dialed my partner while keep my eyes locked on the dark doorway. doorway. He answered, but when I opened my mouth, I could only sob. It sounds ridiculous, but until you experience that level of fear, you have no idea how paralysing it is. My partner rushed home. As the hallway light flicked on and he ran upstairs, I realised I hadn't looked away from the door, not once. My eyes were dry and sore, I felt dazed. He found Buddy trembling behind the sofa and held me until I calmed down. I wish I could say it was just a moment of hysteria. It wasn't.

A month later, my partner had convinced me I overreacted. He was rational and didn't believe in the paranormal. He insisted that nothing had happened, that I had let the rabbit freak me out. I was embarrassed about how I had acted at night, so I agreed. But the feeling never left. It followed me day and night. I never felt alone.

I started catching glimpses of things in my peripheral vision. Then I'd feel crazy for scaring myself. One summer evening I was downstairs in the bath. Buddy sat beside the tub, dozing. My partner was upstairs in the kitchen making dinner. I heard what sounded like a door closing. I ignored it. Our smoke alarm was sensitive.

And my partner had a habit of cremating things. He probably shut the door. to avoid setting it off. Then I heard him shouting, muffled at first. I'm in the bath, I called back, assuming he needed something. The shouting continued. I sighed, stood up and wrapped myself in a towel. I padded into the hallway and yelled. I said, I'm in the bath. Then I heard him clearly. You're not funny. Open this fucking door. A sickening dread crawled through me. I ran upstairs, buddy slunk into the bedroom as I passed. My partner's voice came from the kitchen.

The kitchen door was shut. He was pounding on it from the inside. As I reached for the handle, it clicked open. He came barreling through, his entire weight against the door. At first he was furious, insisting I locked him in as a joke. But as I stood there, dripping, towel wrapped around me, he did the maths. His face paled. The wind must.

must have shut it, he muttered, before returning to dinner. That night, the hatred returned. Buddy and I sat frozen on the sofa, as it stepped out of the hallway, a heavy fud, then another. It was crossing the room towards us. I didn't act out of bravery. I acted out of blind panic. I snatched Buddy up in my arms, his man. massive bulk like carrying a child and bolted downstairs. I didn't lock the door, I just ran all the way to my partner's work. I sobbed in his office until his shift ended. Days later the

final straw came. We left for a short walk. The house was locked. The windows too small for a person were shut. When we returned, something felt wrong and then I noticed. My house plant was missing from the upstairs window. My partner said it must have fallen. We stepped inside. The hallway looked normal and relief washed over me. Then I walked into the kitchen. Every single item in our cupboards had been removed and lined up in a dead straight line along the floor. And my missing plant was sitting at the very end of it. Buddy bolted upstairs, leaving a trail of urine in terror. That was it. We packed and left.

When we moved out, my mother, who knew none of this, was alone, vacuuming the living room. She called me sobbing. She felt it. The landlord rented the house out four more times after us. No one ever lasted longer than their six-month lease. Here are a couple of things I've experienced in my parents' house. I lived in my parents' house until my late 20s, and I was the only one who ever felt or experienced anything unsettling.

For as long as I can remember, I have always felt watched, like there was another presence there. This sensation was usually very slight, except when it came to my parents' room. Their room was always completely dark since their bed had a massive headboard that covered the only window. Any time I had to go in there, I would move with a short, panicked burst of speed to get in and out.

I'm not sure why, but even standing in the line of sight of their room, was enough to make me feel paranoid, like someone inside was watching me from just out of view. The shower we used was in the bathroom connected to their bedroom and the unused room next to it. Any time I went to take a shower, I would shut the door to their room immediately. It was always to protect myself from whatever I felt was in their room, more so than for my own private. Throughout my time living there, I would hear footsteps and random noises around the house in places where I knew no one was. I lost count of how many times I'd be laying in bed and hear full conversations coming from the other side of the wall where the living room was. The voices were always muffled, but I could tell two people were talking. it always happened when I knew my parents were in bed,

in their room, which was on the opposite side of the house. As I got older, my parents began to trust me more with staying home alone. At first, I loved the sense of freedom and responsibility, but it never took too long for the paranoia to set in, or for the noises to start. On one occasion my parents left for a week on a cruise. They were confident enough to leave me alone to watch over the house. house. As night approached on the first day, I went around turning on most of the lights,

and even one of the TVs. After my shower that night, a massive sense of paranoia hit me. I quickly drew the curtain back, half expecting to see an intruder. There was nothing there. I stood there for a moment, shook my head and began drying off with a towel. I was standing in front of the sink, which had a mirror above it. At the right angle, the mirror reflected the room next to my parents' bedroom, showing the door to that room. As I dried my hair, I moved the towel away from my face and glanced into the mirror, only to see, to my absolute blood-freezing horror, a man, dressed in a beige two-piece suit and dark-coloured pants, power-walking towards the mirror.

towards the bathroom where I stood. I screamed, fell onto my back and quickly looked towards the open doorway. It felt like forever. I fully expected someone to round the corner at full speed and attack me. I lay there for what felt like an eternity, tears filling my eyes. After building up the courage, I grabbed my towel, covered myself and peaked around the corner. Only to find no one there. I took my chance and ran to the phone, praying the call would go through.

Luckily, my parents weren't too far from the shore yet. My dad answered and I frantically explained the whole situation, how I felt like something or someone was there with me. He assured me that this was impossible, if I had locked up properly, and that if it wasn't a physical person, then there was nothing there. I accepted his words, even though I didn't fully believe them. as I turned off the lights on my way to my bedroom I locked my door and kept the lights on all night

I can still remember the man's outfit to this day but what freaks me out the most is that he didn't have any facial features just darkness where his face should have been now any time I visit my parents' house I still glance towards their bedroom and the room next to it out of habit

I grew up in a haunted house built in 1929. It was one of the oldest houses in that part of town. My parents were tricked into buying the house because my father was being transferred there by the Air Force, and my family needed a home for 11. My parents and nine children, I am number seven with a younger twin brother. The realtor showed the house a neighbourhood at night. Getting a good deal should have been the first clue. I was two when we moved there, but I remember several.

occurrences. Things like being woken up by hands touching me when there was nothing but a wall. There was a massive gas furnace that took up a large part of the basement and there were often strange shadows of people that were not one of my many siblings. There was a storage area under the eaves of the roof and there were three bedrooms there. One of them was mine which I shared with my oldest sister. It wasn't uncommon to hear voices and cries of children around my age. Four to the same. For to 10 if I had to guess coming from there, only to open the door and find nothing, or on some occasions to see a child-sized shadow, dark by. This next part of the story requires an explanation of where my room was. I shared the room with my sister on the top floor, which had a window that opened over the

porch roof. My sister, one of the reasons that many rules were made, would sneak out of this window, climb down and go to parties. To prevent this, my parents placed my bed under the window, so she couldn't sneak out without waking me. One night, late at night, the window opened. I woke up, and there was a man climbing through the window. I could feel the depression of him climbing from the window onto my bed and into the house. He was black with no face, just a shadowy figure.

but he paused over me and I knew that he knew I saw him then he just finished climbing over my bed and disappeared my sister was already asleep so it wasn't her another time I was in bed and our cat boots was sleeping with me when a green orb about the size of a quarter flew around the room and started coming towards my bed

my cat opened her eyes and tracked the orb as it came close Very calmly she stood up, caught it and ate it. I never saw another orb in my room after that. For the most part, whatever was in that house just made noise, slamming doors, pushing me, which would be scary when on the stairs, or blocking the door and trapping all of us girls upstairs. When we looked through the keyholes, the old round kind you would see through. There was nothing and no one there.

not my brothers nor my parents. A couple of my older siblings got scratched and bruised. My brothers, who had the only basement room, were often bothered by whatever resided down there. They would turn the TV on at random times during the day or night or turn it off while we were watching. Thankfully, whatever it was stayed there and we moved into a much nice neighbourhood.

The second haunted house I experienced was one I babysat at, From ages 13 to 16 I had a regular babysitting gig that I shared with two of my sisters. The gig started with my sister Kara, who was six years older than me, and then went to my sister Kathy when Kara went to college. Kathy only did it a few times, her social life was more important than babysitting, so she didn't last long. To be honest, you probably didn't want to be in a haunted house again, after growing up in one.

I ended up working there for years, mostly in the summer month. The house was mostly fine during the daytime, and for the most part we played outside until dinner, and again after dinner until bedtime. The house had large 10-foot-tall windows at the front. When you entered, there was a sitting room with shelves, a stereo system to the left, and couches against a low wall facing the windows. Next to the couch, half-flight of stairs led up to a railed loft, where the kitchen and dining area were. To the right, a short hall led to the bathroom and three bedrooms. They had a nicely finished basement with a Nintendo and fairly large TV. But honestly, it was very uncomfortable.

No matter how many lights were on or even during the day, it always felt dark, so I avoided it. The little girl I babysat slept in the second room, and I always felt uneasy in there. I'm sure her room was active, because she would often wake up with night terrors and it was difficult to get her to stay asleep. What I remember most is how I would only feel comfortable

after the kids were in bed if I opened the curtains to those big front windows and had the stereo on quietly. I had to have the kitchen lights on even if I had enough light from the front room lamps and I had to sit on the couch curled under a blanket and reading whatever book I'd brought.

In the reflection of the window I could see up upstairs, and once in a while I could see people up there. I forcefully ignored the windows and focused on my book. I could hear things move, or muttering voices, but I would attribute it to the radio. The parents would come back anywhere from 11pm to 1am, drop me off and all was okay again when I got home. I only found out years later that my sisters had followed the same routine and that Kara would bring a book but it was often disturbed by a party in the reflection upstairs, a party that wasn't there when she turned around. Evidently, the reflections tried to have her join in conversations, which she would then try to ignore. I later heard that the owners of the house

used to fight a lot and were on the verge of divorce until they moved. After they left that house, their marriage improved and they stopped drinking. I honestly, think the house was messing with their relationship. I've been interested in the supernatural and strange phenomena since I was in my early teens. The years past that my interest has become more serious. For our 15th wedding anniversary, my wife and I decided that we wanted to do something special to celebrate the occasion. After looking around, we settled on staying at a haunted house in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This led to a couple of incidents that have left a lasting impact. I told a good friend of ours our plans, and as he was involved in ghost investigations,

he lent me some of their usual kit, an EMF meter and a digital recorder. We stayed at the inn and went up to our room. The first thing that struck me as strange was that one wall of our room was decorated, with small, brightly coloured birdhouses. Each one hung on a nail with a length of twine. The bed was comfy, and that evening my wife and I settled down to sleep. The following day we went out and toured the Gettysburg battlefield. We had a great day and enjoyed our time together.

That evening we went on a walking ghost tour. It was very interesting and we learned a lot about the history and law of the area. Towards the end of the evening we ended up in an area called the Hollow. The area was on the edge of the woods and even though we were not far from town, it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We were told that this area, had a bloody history and an extensive history of haunts. We were told stories and then asked to just look out into the woods

and let our eyes adjust to the darkness. I looked around a little and eventually settled on looking back down the path, which we had just walked down. As I stood there with my eyes getting used to the dark, I started seeing pitch black figures, moving back and forth across the path. The movement was very reminiscent of how Gollum moved in the Lord of the Rings movies. As I watched, I saw approximately four to five figures, moving back and forth across the path.

At this time, I was working as a police officer, and my mind immediately went to the logical explanation. I thought that I was imagining it, or that it was just matrixing. As these thoughts were going through my mind, one of the other men in the group walked over to me, and stood next to me, looking down the path. We did not speak at all. Out of nowhere, without taking his eyes off the path, he said, Little black figures scurry in back and forth. In that instant I knew it was not my imagination.

After this experience, my wife and I went back to the inn and to our room. We both slept well after a long active day. The following morning we were laying in bed talking. When I jokingly said that I was, not sure about taking a shower. If there was a ghost in the room, it might peek in on me. I said this in jest and we both laughed. And then I became aware of a slight scraping noise. I looked up and saw one of the birdhouses on the wall was moving. The birdhouse was gently swinging from side to side, just one of them. There was an air conditioner unit in the room,

but there was a curtain in front of it. And the curtain was not moving. And as I have said, only one of the houses was swaying. I immediately got up and grabbed the recorder and the EMF meter. As I watched, the meter lit up and responded to questions. The meter then stopped, but I found that if I walked into another section of the room, the meter would start to light up again. I caught this on camera. As I asked more questions, it sincerely appeared that there was an energetic field,

moving around the room. I then grabbed the digital voice recorder and started asking questions. to see if I could get an EVP. The room was supposedly haunted by a ghost child named Jeremy. I started to ask a question, but blanked on the name. I turned to my wife and asked her if the ghost's name was Jeremy. My wife fought for a moment and then said, yeah. On playback, you can hear me ask the question,

and a second before my wife answers. You can hear a little voice say, yes. We stayed one more night and I did some more ghost. tours, during one of them I was able to capture a sequence of pictures, showing an orb moving down the side of the building, the building we were staying in. We left the following morning. To this day, these events are etched into my mind. I grew up in an old convict built place in Tasmania, Australia, and after living there from 1982 to 1995, I am in absolute no doubt whatsoever. ghosts in particular exist as well as good and evil entities.

I was eight years old when I moved into that old house. I'm 50 now and I still clearly remembered the day I walked into that place. There were eight of us altogether. Mum and dad, me and five siblings. I was the second oldest. Although my youngest brother wasn't even born at the time we moved in and my second youngest was only a baby. The rest of us though, as young as we were, we knew that there was something in that place, and so did our parents.

We knew it the moment we entered. You could just feel it. It was also the experiences in that house that made me a firm believer in the good and evil sides of the paranormal. The ghosts we first encountered in that house weren't hostile to us at all. In fact, to this day, I firmly believe they were more curious about us than anything else. We were the first people to live in that house in 25 years So it was run down when we first went there My dad was a stone mason and builder so he renovated it And that's why I think they were curious about us I know you often hear about ghosts throwing things Banging doors playing peek-a-boo as they call it

And while I think this can happen at times I get very sceptical of ghost videos showing this kind of stuff There was none of that in this house when the ghosts wanted to make themselves known, oh boy, did they? They simply appeared. And I'm not talking about fleeting glances of something in the corner of one's eye, although that did happen sometimes.

I'm talking about full-bodied apparitions that just appeared from nowhere right in front of a person. While they scared the bejesus out of us when they did this, again they were never hostile to us. and there even came a time when we got used to it, although it still gave us a heart attack when it happened so suddenly, and with no warning. We even named them.

The father was George, the mother, Matilda, and the little girl of eight we called Amelia. There are graves on this property belonging to those who first built the house, and it was never ascertained if the mortal bodies of those apparitions we saw in the house or in those graves, although we did find out a little girl of about eight had lived there, but had fallen into one of the fireplaces. She had been burned badly in the accident and died. So we always assumed the little girl ghost we called Amelia, was this child. Amelia we would see just skipping through rooms in a white dress, with a blue silk-like sash around the middle.

Her long blonde hair loose, other times we'd see her in a white nightgown. The woman we called Matilda only ever appeared in one place, by the kitchen door, and she'd be wearing a very old-fashioned green silk-like gown, her blonde hair always neatly up in one of those old 1800 styles. It was the father George who appeared most often though, and he appeared all throughout the house. But his favourite place to pop up was at the end of the long hall or in the big lounge room, which was originally the ballroom of the house.

If I were to describe him, I'd say, think George Washington, as this is what he looked like, and he was always wearing a black coat with tails, white shirts, black pants and his top hat. We had many sceptics come to our house and leave us full-blown believers after an encounter with George. Many of them refused to even return to that house, as while George wasn't hostile with us, there were certain people it appeared he didn't like visiting there and he seemed to make a point of scaring the hell out of them ensuring they'd never come back again I could go on with all the things that happened there

mostly involving George as there was a lot of them but as to not let this go on forever suffice to say this is where I became a firm believer in good and evil there was one room in that house where George and his family never, ever appeared, and it was one of the bedrooms, which unfortunately was the one my older sister and I shared. There was something else in that room, and I'm sure it came from hell itself. We called this entity, Thing. Whatever thing was, it was pure evil, and to this day I don't believe Thing was a ghost, at least not in the same sense as George and his family.

We never saw Thing, and in all the years we were there, it might sound strange to say. something we never saw was more terrifying than George and his family just appearing right there in front of us. But Thing truly was far more terrifying than George and his family ever was. Perhaps in part because they were never hostile to us. Thing was, though. While we never saw Thing, we sure could fill it, and all we ever got from Thing was pure hatred and evil.

Often at night my sister and I would be laying in bed, and the heavy breathing of a man. would feel the room as if he'd been running. At times it was like the breathing was right over the top of us. We'd put our heads under the covers and pretend it wasn't happening, because we didn't know what else to do. None of us ever wanted to talk about Thing, as if by not doing so we could pretend it wasn't really in that room, even though we knew it was. Thing never left this room, by the way. It remained only in that one bedroom. My brother and some of his friends once used a Ouija board to try and find out what thing truly was. They claimed they contacted the spirit of a convict nicknamed Rabbit, who was part of a crew who built the house.

But Rabbit was hanged on the property for killing another convict during construction. My brother and his friends were young at the time, so whether this really happened or they simply made it up, I cannot say. but for years afterwards they insisted it really did happen they did really have a Ouija board though and when my religious mother found out she freaked and burned it there's many incidents I could talk about with thing but this would just get too long if I did the house Glencoe is still abandoned to this day

no one else lived in it after we left in 1995 after dad's sudden death with dad gone there was no one to maintain such a big old house and getting others in to do the work was just too expensive, as the house was heritage listed, and here in Tasmania, there's all sorts of rules and regulations for such houses, and only certain tradespeople can work on them. The current owners of Glencoe are trying to renovate it, and turn it into a wedding and conference place. I often wonder if George and his family still wander its halls,

and if Thing is still in that bedroom, I assume they are. That house was never really ours or anyone else's I don't think It was always theirs And we were the guests passing through I want to go back there one day Even now my fascination with that place and what I saw there Still calls me to return and find out more And I still want to know what thing is

Although I'm not sure it would be a wise move to try and find out Because the only thing I know for sure Is that it was incredibly evil and dangerous. For some background, this happened when I was about 10 or 11. I've always been good friends with my brother who was a couple of years older than me. So naturally my friends have always been a little older than me too. We lived in a quiet little village called Belton, in Norfolk, England, near to the Norfolk Broads.

Me, my brother and our old friend were on our way to the Friday night youth club at the local church, as there wasn't much to do in our sleepy village without causing a disturbance. It was getting dark as it was around Christmas time, so the nights were drawing in. We walked up a narrow country lane leading to the church, which was normal for us. You would occasionally bump into the odd dog walker. So when we saw a gentleman on his tea-time stroll coming towards us, we didn't bat an eyelid. Until we started getting closer, I then realised it was hard to make out any distinct features. I can tell you he stood around average height and height.

build. One thing that stood out to me is that he had what I can only describe as a blue aura around him. No facial features though. At this point our childish conversation had come to an abrupt stop without realising. No words were spoken as it looked like he was going to barge through us, all walking astride. There was that awkward moment of deciding what way to pass each other. But he seemed to steady in his pace so it wasn't until the last. second, me and our old friend, we'll call him Dave, could tell he was coming straight between us. So continuing in our silence, we parted to let him through. But as he passed between the two of us, and as we turned to watch, he just vanished.

There was no dog walker, and instantly we got the chills. I can't remember the exact words expressed, but it was to the effect of, did you just see that? We couldn't believe what had just happened. We ran as fast as we could to the church in terror. We burst through the doors like a scene after Scooby-Doo, to the amusement of the club leaders. Matt was the man in charge. We tried to explain what had just happened,

but Matt dismissed it as all our minds playing foolish tricks on us. It turns out only me and Dave saw the dog walker. My brother claimed to have missed the entire thing, up until me and Dave parted to let it, or whatever it was through. I know it wasn't our minds playing tricks on us, and I am still adamant that what we saw that day was not something of this mortal plane.

It didn't seem evil in any way, but as you can imagine to a bunch of young lads, it was quite the fright. I am currently 29, and my whole life I have been a strong empath. I'm sensitive to energies both from the living and sometimes the non-living. I know not everyone believes in that, understands it, and that's okay, you don't have to. And honestly, if you don't live your whole life

feeling the energy in every room you walk into, I tip my hat to you. I wanted to share with you my story, the one that has followed me, and I have recently discovered, doesn't just affect me. So whether you believe in the paranormal or not, here we go. When I was a young girl about eight or nine years old. My family lived in St. Genevieve. The house I remembered the most living in was a house on Baltimore Street, where the basement was sealed up. The landlord had said that little boy had drowned in it during one of the big floods in the civil war time. My mum and dad weren't very big on the paranormal and so the little things that happened around the house, paranormal like things, like small objects being misplaced or little bumps you hear upstairs, were ignored.

or explained away as to not scare us kids. Because of this, growing up, I learned that you just don't comment on it. From the first night sleeping in that house, I felt uneasy, but being a stubborn young child, I chalked it up to me being babyish and just sucked it up. However, there were things that happened that I couldn't explain, like my door coming unlocked and opening in the middle of the night, or the very dark shadow figure that would walk across the room, room and stand at the bottom of my bed and leave scratch marks on my bedpost that I would later get

blamed for by my mother. It would stand at the bottom of my bed, tapping and scratching the wooden railing, silently and unmoving, as if it was there just to make me terrified. I both feared and hated that dark shadow figure. There were nights it would come closer than the foot of my bed. I would hide under my blankets in a foolish attempt to hide from what I came to call the shadow man, and it wasn't just me who had seen him. One night I had a friend sleep over, and at some point in the dark of the night, we both woke up to my door being unlocked, and the tall shadow walking into my room. We both hid under the blankets until we eventually fell asleep again.

After that night, she never slept over again. My little brother at the time was around four, and he completely refused to sleep in his room. So me, being brave big sister, I told him I would sleep in his room. And if I could do it, he could too. Turns out Shadow Man didn't just visit my room. He would stand next to my little brother's bed too. I never encouraged him to sleep in his room again. And as time continued on, it was as though the Shadow Man just got a bit closer.

and closer. Soon we were both sleeping downstairs on the couch, much to our parents' annoyance. But then again, neither one made much of an attempt to make us sleep in our rooms. Eventually we moved away, and for the longest time I don't remember seeing Shadow Man. I had a few other encounters growing up that I might try to share. But that's for another time. Fast forward several years, and I'm now a mother to a very intelligent little girl. She was born two and a half months premature and is sensitive in ways that mirror my own.

She is so incredibly strong and feisty and brave and is now a thriving three-year-old with boundless energy. She's my entire world and unfortunately we have been going through a rough time in our lives. About two months ago, I was tucking her into bed and telling her good night. As I turned to turn her light off, she bolted upright in bed and said, "'Mummy, he's back. "'Small note, she has never been afraid of her room "'or anything in her room before. "'I turned the light back on and turned,

"'the hair on the back of my neck standing straight. "'She was pointing to the corner of her room by her ball pit. "'The tall dark man,' she cried, "'and in that moment the memory of my childhood of the shadow man "'sprung into my mind. "'I asked my daughter, baby, what do you mean? "'Who is here?' Mommy can't see anything.

And with fear in her eyes, she told me he stands in her ball pit at night, and he scares her. I did not want her to go through what I went through as a child, and knowing she was seeing and describing something from my childhood, broke my heart. I prayed that night, and she slept in my room. The next day I walked around her room and told whatever was in there,

it was not welcome in my house, or near my little girl. It didn't work. A few nights went on the same and my little girl utterly refused to sleep in her room. I went to my grandma. I've always gone to her when it came to spiritual or paranormal questions. When I stopped by her house before I could even bring it up,

she looked at me and said, you have something you need to speak with me about and we really need to get into it. So I began telling her about what I am. had seen as a child, and ended telling her about my little girl's fearful outburst the night prior. Gran looked at me and said, It comes for children. It and others like him. It's not quite a shadow person, more like a demon that preys on the vulnerable. She then went into her room and brought out a small jar and handed it to me. I've kept this and I'm glad I did. What you and her are going through

right now has left her especially vulnerable, and it knows that. Take this and use it to protect my great grandbaby. She then handed me the small jar of holy water. It's not a lot, but it has power. Put across above each window and door, and a cross on her forehead. You need to pray over her and over the room and the house. You have to tell it it is not welcome in your home or near your baby girl and you have to put power behind it. Let it know that it's your home, not it, and it is not welcome. I went home that night and myself along with my family did as my grandma told me. Honestly, I could feel a lightness in the room afterwards, and my little girl has not been afraid to go in her room, nor has she said anything further about the shadow man.

I keep praying he stays away. It was one thing to see and feel it as a kid. but as a mother, I'm just glad my little girl told me, and that my grand knew what to do. To any parents out there, please don't just dismiss when your little one says, something is there in the night. As my grand said, it comes for children. I've always believed in the supernatural, and I've experienced some terrifying things in several places, especially with what is the most haunted house in my country. but what I experienced with this furniture in my own home really sealed my belief.

It was the most solid evidence I could get. A few years ago I inherited furniture which one of my relatives got from a nearby 18th century wealthy house that is now in ruins. I knew the house had a history, but little did I know how bad it was. After years being stored in my shed, I decided to restore the furniture and display. it in my house because not only was it beautiful, but it was a great piece of history and was also worth a lot of money, so I restored the furniture and placed it in one of the rooms in my house. I always had an eerie feeling in the room and I couldn't shake off the feeling I was being watched, but I just ignored it. The first night with the furniture in the room I was still awake

and couldn't sleep when I clearly heard from the next room, where the furniture was, the sound one of the antique faces I put on the sireboard, falling to the ground. I scowled, thinking I must have left it near the edge and got up to clean it up. But when I got into the room, I was shocked to see that nothing had fallen. I went back to bed now, thinking that the furniture had bought a shadow of its past with it. But I wasn't 100% sure until the day I was alone in the house. My family was gone and I was watching TV, when the door to the room, slagged. shut hard, like a gust of wind had slammed it. No doors or windows were opened, so I got up and walked into the room to find that the window wasn't open there either. That's when I realized that

the door had been shut. I slept beside the room, so after this instant, late at night, I were continuously hear a knocking on the far right corner of my wall from that side of the room. This went on for a few months, and I decided that enough was enough. I went to the nearest monastery whose masses are famously long, and their prayers are sung, and requested that mass be said for the souls lingering in my house. This was done, and after that, everything stopped, and the furniture sits peacefully in the house. I later researched the house and discovered that in the 18th century, the owners were part of a cult. Furthermore, they took it upon themselves

to hang a supposed thief off of a tree with no proper trial and it was a national scandal. Some locals have an old story that a maid was drowned in the house as well and probably not by accident. Thankfully, now is all at rest in my house, but I wouldn't like to live in the wealthy house.

Maybe it's better as a ruin. I've had a lot of weird and very unexplained things happen in my home, early life. A lot of these are very short, one-off experiences that I won't muddy you with, unless you want to hear more. They are nothing, if not at least interesting and had an impact on me through my life. I'm going to be upfront with you and let you know that around my later 20s, I came down with schizophrenia, and that has dramatically altered my life. I know that throws a huge, probably just all in your head, wrench into these stories, though all of them occurred long before I

came down with a disorder. And some events even happened with witnesses, and they all felt much more real than the psychosis I've experienced in my late 20s. So I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this story is real or not. This story goes back to when I was 12 or so, finally becoming a latchkey kid with my own set of house keys. At the time I was attending a private school I was forced to go to and was usually driven home by a carpool from school. I never really felt horrible about being home alone for hours on end until my parents would come home from work. But after this day, that would all change and leave me seeing my house in a different light. I did my usual picking up the mail from the mailbox and going to the back door to unlock it. In my house,

the back door basically leads directly into a mudroom and then directly leads into the kitchen. So I entered, threw the mail down on the table, and my beagle at the time comes up happy to greet me. I pet her and then start walking through the kitchen. Halfway into the kitchen, I began to feel like I was being watched. Suddenly I heard a voice of what sounded like a little girl. It came from about two feet in front of me, but no one was there. Just the sound of a young girl quizzically saying, "'Mummy.'

I immediately froze. I began freaking out but couldn't move. How could a clear voice just appear out of nowhere? Once again the voice clearly said, "'Mummy.' That's where my ass kicked into gear. I ran away from the voice through the living room, towards the hallway with stairs.

I could hear what sounded like something's footsteps, quickly following behind me, and the loud sounds of a young giggling girl, but oddly I felt like it could have easily caught me if it wanted to. Looking back, I think it was enjoying this, spooking the shit out of me, but not actually jumping on me or hurting me. My heart was in my head at this point

and I run up the flight of stairs to the second floor, quickly followed by my dog. Once I got to the top of the stairs, I turned around and looked down. My beagle was right by my side. oddly the source of the giggling stopped at the bottom of the stairs still giggling but not coming up the stairs i looked down left at my beagle she was glaring at whatever this thing was at the bottom of stairs like a focus pointer and growled a little under her breath even though i couldn't see anything there

i just hoped whatever it was would just go away suddenly the loud giggling at the bottom of the stairs began to mourn't into this hideous, almost monster-like, demonic cackling. I honestly couldn't believe what I was hearing, and it was clearly freaking out my dog. The demonic cackling then began to mix with the extremely loud sound that I can only describe as a monster gnashing its teeth, snapping its jaw shut and open, over and over again, as the demonic cackling continued. At this point I was completely freaked out and had enough.

I picked up my beagle and ran into my bedroom, locked myself in my room, and in typical childish fashion, gathered all my pocket knives and hid under the bed covers, like that would do any good against an other worldly being or demon or whatever the hell it was. The story ends kind of anti-climatically, funny enough. I basically waited for six hours or so,

my bedroom with my dog, scared out of my wits until my parents came home. Obviously I was scared to come out of my bedroom but I knew my parents would never believe me and where else was I supposed to go at 12 years old, just walk out of my house and never come back. I did what I had to do and suck up my nervousness and try not to let it get to me, no get to me it still did. After this event I never looked at my house the same way again. A lot of wits. A lot of wits. weird stuff has happened to me, but never again did I encounter the little invisible girl demon, which to me makes it even odder that it was a one-off. I spent most of my life trying to pretend this event never took place, but one detail always

comes back and scares me. If it was all in my head, then why did my beagle react like there was something really there? I didn't prompt her to look at something. Something she saw unsettled her as well. And to be frank, that gives me the hebi-jeebies. I have never been one to say that I believe in ghosts or the paranormal. I have been aware of them potentially existing, but I have never subscribed to the thought that they could be real.

I guess you could say I was a sceptic. Around the time of March or April of 2004, I was walking back to my flat after spending the evening with a close friend of mine. It was around 8 or 9pm in the evening, so it was starting to get done. around the midpoint of my journey home, out of the corner of my eye, down one of the side roads. I thought I saw what seemed to be a shadowy figure. At the time, I thought nothing of it, and continued my way home. Upon getting to my street, I called a glimpse of it again,

out of the corner of my eye. I turned around and called out, asking if anyone was there. There was no answer. I proceeded to head inside my flat building. For a time, A tiny bit of context, this flat complex was originally a three-story house that they had converted into three separate flats, one on the bottom floor, one in the middle, and me right at the top in the penthouse. All the doors to the three flats are fire doors, so they are very heavy and you can hear whenever someone opens or closes them, and when someone bangs on the doors while they are locked, they make a very loud banging noise, from where the door opens slightly and closes again.

After I got into my flat I sat down on my sofa and my cat ran over to me to cuddle with me a little bit as he had not seen me for most of the day and after a few minutes I heard steps coming up the stairs thinking it was just one of the people

living below me coming home I thought nothing of it until there was a loud bang as my door was trying to be opened after hearing the bang I immediately stood up moved over to my door and opened it There was nothing there And if someone had done it for a prank

I would have heard them walking back down the stairs I also heard nothing There was no evidence that someone had walked back down the stairs There was no activity for the next two or three months Until one early morning in June I worked a night shift My shift start at 3am and finish at 11am So I'm leaving for work about 2.30 in the morning

I was walking to work and when I was about five minutes away, I could see the shadowy figure again, just standing a short way in the distance from me. Even in the early morning darkness, I could still make this figure out, as it seemed to be a much darker shade of black in comparison to the night sky.

I called out to the figure, asking what it wanted. There was no answer. As I made my way closer to it, it suddenly vanished. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. I haven't had any more interactions with this entity since then. I still have some doubts regarding what I saw and experienced, but in any event, I don't think I am as skeptical as I was before.

If I have any more experiences with this shadow figure, I'll be happy to send in another email and update you all on what I have experienced. The year was 2008. I was around nine years old, and my first year, family and I were travelling from California to visit my family that lives in Ohio. It was my summer vacation trip and I'd been looking forward to it all year. I always look forward to visiting family in Ohio as we didn't get to see them very often living across the country. We were staying at my grandmother's house that lived just outside of the Dayton Bayo area. We would usually spend most

of our vacation with family driving around and getting into local activities in the area. One afternoon, we were at a local farm getting vegetables for dinner, when we had the idea to visit a well-known, haunted old graveyard that was nearby. This graveyard has to be at least 200 years old, with some graves showing dates that were around the American Civil War era. We pulled up to this graveyard and couldn't have went on a more gorgeous day. It was completely sunny, room temperature with almost a stillness in the air. When we exited our vehicle, we all just left our doors open, as we weren't planning on staying very long.

We were walking through the graveyard and checking out the dates and names on the headstones that were still legible. When I saw a headstone that stuck out to me, there's a nine-year-old boy. It had a crack on the headstone and some really old coin sitting on top of it. My foolish self decided to take a coin off of this headstone as a souvenir, and the second I picked it up, off the headstone. All four of our car's doors slammed shut at the exact same time. This was not a windy day whatsoever. There wasn't even any wind present. And this was also a vehicle with very heavy doors, and there would have been no possible way that could have happened on its own. This scared every single one of us, and we decided it was time to go. I instantly put the coin back and headed back to the car.

This was frankly one of the scariest experiences I've ever had happened to me, as I truly cannot explain what happened here. In early 2018, me and my partner and my mates that I worked at a bottle shop or liquor store, all moved into an old house behind an accounting building in Wodonga. The property had been split into two bits with a two-story work accounting business up front and an old renovated house out the back. So after we got settled in and got all of our furniture in and everything set up nothing really happened for a few months

The house was always a bit dark Due to the fact it had a two-story building out the front And not many windows But it was always unnaturally cold Like hotel room air conditioning cold But the place didn't have any And on top of that We all got a strange feeling from the master bedroom in the back

Which my housemate took So he could have his own bathroom And not get annoyed by me and my partner couple stuff. But when you were alone in the house, it felt like you got a feeling of being watched. First thing to really happen was noises at night. We would hear little scuffles in the roof or doors opening, and when we would go to check the doors, they all would be in the same way we had left them. The worst part of the random sounds was that you would hear the rattling of door knobs. Not like horror movie twist

them, trying to get the door open. More like a wrong key trying to unlock the house quietly. You could say it's someone trying to break in, but we had cameras, and when we were checked them, no one was on video. One of the bigger events to happen would be when my partner was home alone at the time. It was a Saturday night and me and my housemate wanted to go clubbing at Paddy's in Albury, which is one of four clubs in the area and only seven kilometres away from Wadonga. My partner couldn't come with us due to the age to get in is 18 and she was a few months

off so she stayed home and watched videos in bed. Now this part is a bit patchy due to it being such a long time ago and I was a few beers deep but when we were having a good time chilling out at the club my phone started blowing up with texts. My partner was terrified. She said someone was in the house and they were looking through our stuff. She told me she you could hear drawers in the kitchen being opened, taps running, stuff being thrown around. But most of the commotion was coming from my office that was in between our room and my housemate's room. Thank God that my housemate was the designated driver, and we left as fast as we could. Now to get home, we had about 10 minutes of highway driving to do. I can't say the speed at which

my housemate was driving, but I can tell you that I never knew a VE Commodore could get to that speed. When we arrived home, we went straight into fight mode. But once we got to the door, it was locked, like the way we left it. I went straight to my bedroom to find my terrified partner hidden under the covers, whilst my housemate looked around to see if anyone was there. We found nothing. Well, almost nothing. We told my partner that everything was okay and in place, and we weren't sure what she had heard. She said she wasn't lying and that she did hit. She said she was hear it, and we believed her, especially when we found what was in my office. But that was scared her to the point of not living with us. The office was trashed. Nothing expensive broken,

and my computer was okay, but paper was everywhere, and two chairs, one of which was a big leather one, was tipped and torn. Nothing was taken and the camera showed no one coming around or into our house, so we had nothing to really show the police. So we just cleaned up the office and nothing happened for a while. But between the office attack and the last event before our lease ran out, we went into the roof space to try and run an internet cable from the kitchen to the office. It was pretty dusty and full of the old tenant stuff that had been up there for who knows how many years. But the thing that stuck out to us was the strength.

amount of old high hills. Not all the same size either. They were roughly above the office. We didn't do much about it other than put a cable through a vent and closed up the manhole. But the last event to ever happen, a few weeks before our lease ran out, happened to me in the middle of the night. I was banished to the big blue couch we had in the middle of the house, due to me having a cold and I couldn't stop coughing. My partner couldn't sleep because of all the coughing. I was sleeping when I started to wake up in the night due to me having a block nose, only to see what I would call an apparition of a person's face up near mine. There was no features, no eyes or mouth.

I could only see the outline and see a shoulder and neck, but other than that, it looked like a dark black cloud just looking at me. Now you could say that you're in the dark and that's just shapes in the dark. but we had the lights on the kitchen so you could see where you were going in the night if you needed anything. After seeing this apparition, I shot up and stood up real fast

to see this thing go and fade down the hallway towards my roommate's bedroom. But in between where I was sleeping in the hallway was a pool table me and my housemate had bought so it would have had to go through it in order to get to the hallway. Shortly after that night

we moved out and haven't been back since I talk to my partner a lot about that house and our experiences are very similar. Sadly, I never got the chance to ask my housemate due to us growing apart and him passing from cancer a few years later. It's impossible for me to prove any of this. I don't have any documented recordings or photographs to share or showcase, but what I've got is a claim. My story is true.

Or at least, I believe it to be so. I'm completely honest at that. And while that used to once upon a time scare me, now I rather find solace in this fact. For if my story is true, then there is more to this world than we know. I digress. I was a very happy child who grew up to be a happy boy. My toils were mostly related to my family being unable to understand my interests or aspirations. But I could live with that.

I said interests and aspirations brought me a man. thence join nonetheless. Then I hit puberty and started being severely interested in girls. As you can imagine, that complicated things for quite a bit. Now, I've never spent time for a lady that I had label as wasted. In fact, all of my antics have taught me invaluable lessons, which I am grateful for to this day. But the first time, which I dares to say I truly fell in love, was very dramatic indeed. I found her astounding, and what was most most of the same.

curious was that it happened kind of unexpectedly. One day she was just another girl and the next, the most precious creature I had ever laid eyes on. It didn't matter how she looked or how she behaved. I saw her differently. And with that, hopefully, I've illustrated the hopeless romantic that I had become. I was prepared to risk everything and anything just to be with her for a single day. Of course, she did not return my feelings. But we were still very close, her and I. We'd spend our days together, almost dancing on the verge of that what-if, which kept giving me hope time in again.

Until one day she broke my heart completely by becoming an item with none other than my best friend at the time. Oddly enough, that only bound me stronger to her, and of him I would see nor hear no more. As many a fragile teenage mind before me, I took to keep myself busy during that apocalypse. And I can't tell you why, but I then developed a rapid and intense interest in the occult. Maybe it was my love of horror and urban legends, or the fact that I had grown up with books of myths and fables. No point in pondering. Rituals, spells, candles and incantations have become my closest friends. time went on they broke up but regardless of that i was still not her first choice moreover she was

moving away and that devastated me at a point where i honestly believed i could not hurt more but a broken yet knowledgeable mind is always inclined to spring to action rather than sulk in its own misery i devoted quite a lot of my time to studying regional rituals and customs you see and by regional i mean Eastern European. We're a fascinating culture in that regard, a mixture of pagan and Christian, of exotic and expected, and one of the most curious figures in our law was the devil. By that, I don't mean Satan or Lucifer, I mean a being which is equally as cunning, but also not entirely vile. Just as dangerous, mind you, and certainly not a good subject for a young boy's first rituals. None the wiser. I was about to use a generalised word to open a doors somewhere, so that something could come in.

But so what? It was all just child play, dragons and sorceries, as in the books I love to read. Then came a night where I decided to be bold and go through with the ritual in question. It was rather simple, light some candles, say some words, and have a piece of red string and a stone on hand. The stone would host the devil's soul And the red string would be symbolic of its tail As long as I possessed it It would do as it was told If I were to lose either

However it would be free to wreck my life as it saw fit A fair trade if I ever bore witness to one So how will I stay vigilant upon these items at all times Simple I was to hide the stone amongst my books As I only delve deep in their dust. And of the string, an even better fairy-towered-fueled solution, I would keep the foot of my bed on top of the string so that it would not ever move. And to be clear, my bed is sat in my own

room and I have no pets or siblings. That is, what I then called a genius level foolproof plan. Midpoint through the ritual, just when I was supposed to say my wish out loud, I realised they didn't even know what I wanted. Would I wish for her to love me back, or for a single perfect day of love, both physical and ephemeral? Did I simply want her to not move away? Or was it happiness, I sought? Being unable to focus my young mind elsewhere beyond the vestibule of her presence or figure.

Unable to decide, I said, Make all my wishes come true, and immediately felt silly a bit after it was all over. And honestly, it was a fun little playtime session. I genuinely never believed something would come out of it. In fact, neither did I use the right type of stone nor the right colour of candle. I just did it to make myself feel better, to have done something, or at least attempted to do something,

which would help me hold on to the first addicting frill for just a bit longer. I hid the stone and put the string at the foot of my bed and then fell asleep. The next day I'd forgotten all about it. I was never meant to remember anything. After all, it was just a thing I did. Same as playing a video game or sharing dreams with my peers. Then, she called me on my cell phone. Now, mind you, this was back in 2008,

where cell phones were not so smart and had cameras that produced images barely capable of being. called photos. And also, she had never called me in the past. Not once. Not just because calls were expensive back then, but because, well, she never really wanted to. Furthermore, she asked to see me. We went out for the first time ever, just the two of us, and we had a wonderful day. Yet my mind could not fall back to the ritual. This was just a happy coincidence, right? Well, that instant turned into a stream of luck. I don't want to get into the details but that period of my life is painted with the shades of the golden hour itself. But as all of you undoubtedly know, soon after the sunset,

darkness settles in. And one day it hit me. It had to be my ritual. There was no other reasonable explanation. Too many good things were happening, one right after the other. It felt surreal and improbable, so I just self-proclaimed myself a master demonologist, and allowed my spirit to enjoy this graceful period. Then, one day I came home to discover my room was different. It turns out that my grandmother had decided that the place was filthy, and had therefore intervened as she saw fit. The stone, displaced, the string removed. Chills went down my spine. I instantly went online to seek solutions to my situation. keep in mind even if the net was just as wide back then. To me it was just a few months

after I'd got an internet access to begin with. The only seemingly solid bit of a vice I got was this. Tossed a stone at a sunlit area and make sure the sunlight covers it for as long as possible. After that's done, throw it in a church courtyard and forget about it. So I did, but it was already too late. She moved away anyway, but I had other issues to keep me entertained. First, I started having nightmares. Then my best friend betrayed me. We were practically close since we were children, and I had saved him from trouble numerous times.

Yet suddenly all of that was forgotten, and he was incredibly aggressive against me. Luckily, we are still close, but if I ask him today about that period, he cannot recall any reason for his behaviour. Soon after, I lost my great-grandmother. As if that were not enough, I lost my other great-grandmother merely months after.

Legal complications ensued over our property, and I was forced to move out, leaving all that I knew behind me, my friends, my area, and everything that I loved, my first room, the only one that I've ever felt at home in, all of my memories, seemingly everything that I had ever cherished. It's still difficult for me to talk about that to this day, so much that I regret the outcome. I knew what was up. I didn't have the tale. And that was the issue. We moved into a building that was practically still under construction. Not just the lights, but the electricity grid in general was going berserk on a daily basis. I had to go down in the dingy dark basement and reset the breakers by hand multiple times per day. And sometimes, at night. While we stayed there, I broke my legs with my own hand twice while trying to put my shoes on. It's okay. Feel free to get a bit of a laugh out of that.

but it did happen. What hurt me the most, however, was that I was alone. Most of my friends seemingly forgot about my existence. Almost nobody came to see me, which made me feel terribly lonesome. Now, I am grateful for the few that stuck with me, because without them I could not possibly imagine how I would have managed. Then there was the presence.

No shadow figures to speak of. No voices or laughter to describe. Just this oppressive. feeling. It manifested itself when it was dark, especially after the electricity had gone out, and I had only my flashlight to rely on. Saying that now, I recall that back then I had made a habit of having multiple flashlights on me, or near me at all times, in my backpack, on my nightstand, and even in the bathroom. When it was dark, it felt like there was something beside me, mere centimetres away from my face. I felt like I was about to experience a real-life jump scare

at any moment. Now? Or now? Maybe now. It felt like something was just sitting there right beside me, feeding on all my misery, and worst of all, I knew why, and I believed that I deserved it. We moved just again because my parents were also suffering due to the constant electrical issues. For a bit, everything felt normal after we moved into our new place, but then it came back with full thought, stronger than ever. I started waking up to visions or were they reality. I would get startled awake, barely able to catch my breath, with this urgent feeling in my chest. I would open my eyes and look around only to see the entire room covered in strange black symbols that I could not understand, but I felt as though they were there to mock me. At first it scared me deeply. Then I simply got

used to it, for what else could I do? While all of this time was going on, I kept buying new books and researching online, but I couldn't find any sort of solution to my problem, which I was willing to go through with, so I just suffered. It had gotten to the point where I would wake up, see the symbols, and then just turn my back and force myself to fall asleep. But then the thing got more creative. There were in numerous instances where elements of the following would happen, but this one story I would like to share was its magnum opus. To this day, I remember it funnly because I almost felt proud of all the effort this thing had put into making me feel even more afraid. I spent the majority of that day reading one of my favourite books for the first time. But after dusk settled and evolved

to darkness, I started hearing footsteps under my window. I thought it must be some animal, and until they intensified to an extent where I couldn't take it any longer. I was still a teenager, but a rather brave one, closer to an adult than a child at that point. So I got up, went outside with a flashlight, and there was nobody and nothing there. I got back inside, believing that I chased whatever it was away, only to hear them again, drawing closer to my window.

whatever, I told myself, continuing to read until I fell asleep. I was woken up at about 4 in the morning. The reason for that was the sound of my room's door opening. The handle was a bit loose, it wasn't uncommon for it to open up on its own when the wind was strong, or when there was some sort of strong vibration in the estate. I had my back turned to the door, so I just stood there for a moment. I sighed, realizing that I would have to get up to close. it. And then I heard the door getting closed again. I froze. Then came the footsteps,

no longer outside my window, but within my room. I felt their direction from the door towards me. I moved my body just a bit to rule out sleep paralysis, but I was able to move freely, damnation. The footsteps stopped to my desk. which was inches away from my bed and my head. Then my chair, the seat of which was neatly tucked under the desk, got dragged across the floor, as if to make enough room for someone or something to sit.

And sit, it did. Wood splicing and crackling in its steed. Then what sounded like fingers began tumbling against my desk's surface. Impatiently. Get up. Witness me. fear me so that I may leave you for a while longer. This is your doing, so suffer me, is what I interpreted all of that as. I felt like I was about to faint, so scared was I,

as if hours are passed by and I could still hear those fingers going at it. First came the first. Then nature started calling, and at a point I told myself, Listen, you can either sit here until dawn, or turn around and get this over with. What's the worst that could happen? If this thing wanted you dead, it would have killed you already. I'm practically feeding it right now by sitting here. Worst case scenario, I pissed myself at the age of 17, and nobody ever finds out. Big deal.

Having decided that I could live with that, I turned around, prepared to see my adversary for the first time ever. fears of claws and teeth and horns and bright red eyes swelled up blocking my breath my room's door was closed my chair was neatly placed beside my desk there was nobody in the room with me everything was just how i had last seen it somewhat relieved i exited my bedroom and visited the bathroom i did my deeds and drank my fill after which i splashed my face a couple of times and then I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked so tired of all of this. Something didn't seem right.

Was it my face? No. It was something around me. Something behind me. I needed a couple of seconds to notice it, but when I did, everything came back to me all at once. All the fear, misfortune, dread and sadness. Behind me on the bathroom tiles.

There was a splash of blood. I turned around and examined it. It was blood indeed. Red. Deep. I had no younger siblings and nobody had access to my house. So this being a prank was out of question. I feared that somebody in my family could have gotten hurt.

So I went out to check but everyone seemed to be fast asleep. I went back to the bathroom and the blood was still there. I decided the best thing I could do was to wash it home. off, so that if somebody else pays a midnight visit to the loo, they would not get startled. The next morning I asked around. Nobody had gotten hurt. Not last night. Not recently. After that, for a while, things were calm. We moved again, this time allegedly for the final time. That would turn out to be untrue, but either way. The dread kept creeping up on me from time to time. but I insisted on finding myself more pleasurable activities to partaking,

due to which I was able to ignore it more easily. Then came one fateful night. I had not had that vision with the symbols for a longer time than usual. Throughout that same day I had become really tired, as I was engaged in multiple different types of shenanigans. So this nasty thing that haunted me had picked a pretty bad time to try its classic trick on me again. I woke up. The symbols were there, and I distinctly remember telling it off, and just turning

around and going back to sleep. But I had nightmares, quite visceral ones at that, of my loved ones opening the door to my room and pouring in, waking me from my slumber. They were, however, twisted versions of themselves, with wide black eyes and crooked teeth-filled mouths. It was honestly one of the most stressful dreams I've ever had. When I woke up, the symbols was still up. That was the last straw, the last drop. I would not take this any longer. I started shouting, telling that thing to go away. I asked what more could it take of me, had it not been enough. I spoke a few protection spells that I had learned and went to wash my face. When I came back, the symbols were gone, but I could still feel the presence. So I took out a marker and placed numerous,

protective sigils around my room. Then I opened the door to my room and kindly told the thing to get lost. I almost physically felt the atmosphere change. I closed the door and slept. I still have nightmares sometimes and I still feel dread, but it's just like any other person. Rather recently, I even had a nightmare about seeing no symbols again. When I woke up and saw my walls clear, I sighed in relief.

I said to myself, you little rascal. But in reality, I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night, staying vigilant of anything unusual. Just paranoia, luckily, hopefully. I still read occult books, and I love to learn about curious cultural traditions. I'm not sure if I'll ever partake in a summoning ritual again, but if, for whatever reason, I decide to do so again,

I'll make sure to remember three key things. To know who I'm speaking to, be aware of what I'm asking for, and to never lose the items I'm binding said entity too. You may find this odd, but in an unexpected and unusual twist for a story of this horrific manner, I'm actually happy to have lived through the ordeal, because life can get very boring, and knowing that it could just abruptly end in a finite fashion is very depressing. Once again, I must insist, I can't prove any of this, but I believe it to be true, and that can mean only one thing.

There's more to life and everything beyond it that we could ever dream to know of. And if that doesn't help you sleep better, I don't know what good. Now I should preface this by saying I don't believe in the paranormal, or do I do enjoy all the stories and experiences. but I do have a few unexplained experiences of my own, and this is the last one to happen. One of my friends of 15 years and his family had decided to move countries. So in September of 2003 I took him and his family for one final holiday, down to my parents' holiday home in North Cornwall. Now I've been down there with friends and with family and by myself multiple times,

and I have never experienced anything out of the ordinary until this one night in September. We had been there for four days. This was our second to last night before leaving back home in Bedfordshire. And as usual, nothing out of the ordinary had occurred for the entire period that we were there. But that night, something happened that I cannot explain. Now, this next part may be difficult to put into coherent sentences. It may just end up as a confusing mess of words, but sometime just after 8pm, myself and my friend's stepfather. that stepped outside into the back garden to satiate our unfortunate addiction to nicotine. We sat down on some patio chairs and continued the same activity we've been engaging in all that evening, namely sharing videos on the internet that we found funny. Now, one thing to understand about my parents' holiday home is that the driveway runs alongside the house all the way to the back garden. The only other feature of note is an eight-foot wall that runs from the house, and partially separates the driveway from the garden.

I was sitting in the chair facing my friend stepdad, the wall and the opening to the driveway when it happened. As he went to show me one more funny video, turning his phone around to face me, and orange lights around the size of an American baseball wandered around the opening of the driveway. Now this was directly in my eyeline, so I managed to see the entire thing.

A light, just about level of the top of the wall, wall, moved around the wall as if someone had just walked around it with a light on their head. Obviously this couldn't have been the case, as it was somewhere between eight to nine feet in the air, and from my lower angle, clearly above the hedge on the boundary with the neighbours. Seeing the confusion on my face, my friend stepped out turned around. As he did, the light moved back behind the wall, with a kind of momentum that looked like a person ducked their head behind the wall after being caught. In the dark, with the light shining directly at me, I couldn't see anything behind it. But that movement made me feel as if a person, or something physical, was behind that light.

My friend's stepdad, having seen the same thing, looked back at me and asked, what the hell was that? And I did not have an answer. We both went inside, grabbed my friend and began searching the garden and driveway. We didn't find anything. Not even when we looked over the hedge into the neighbour's garden, just in case my perspective was messed up in the dark, and it was further away than I thought. After about 20 minutes, I remembered the house had security cameras, and one of them pointed directly to that portion of the driveway, with the entrance to the garden.

The only activity on the cameras was the first. free of us searching the driveway. Scrolling back through, I couldn't even find any evidence of the light having been there. No shadows, no light, and definitely no people. Had it just been me that experienced it, I would have assumed I was hallucinating. But for some reason at the time, and that experience scared me more than any other experience in my life. Growing up, I was very close to my papa. His name was John. John and I spent a lot of time together. We did everything together. Growing up I didn't have a dad so he stepped into that role.

In 2014 I was in my second year of high school. John started to act differently. His health very quickly deteriorated and in the space of two weeks, I lost him. His death hit me hard. I didn't know how to handle it and quickly isolated myself from my friends and family. About a week or so after his death, one night it was a little bit of his death. One night it was around 2 a.m. I was still awake. I could barely sleep and I was still struggling

hard with his death. I was in my bed sat up reading a book with a small lamp beside me switched on. Now this lamp was one of those lamps that has a plastic tube shape with the bulb inside it, with no way of getting it unless you unscrew the bottom. The light started to flicker, but not in a subtle flicker. It was a violent flicker. I jumped and stared at it for a moment. then I don't know how this was possible but the light became very bright brighter than it ever once and this lamp's brightness couldn't be adjusted I got frightened but I wasn't prepared to sleep just yet I turned away from the lamp facing the bedroom wall when I looked at the wall I saw a shadow at first I assumed it was a shadow of myself but then I looked at where it was on the wall wall, it was too big of a shadow to be mine. The shadow had no shape, just some sort of weird blob. I don't know why, but I felt like I had to keep looking at it. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

The shadow then started to shift in shape, and before my eyes, I saw a silhouette of my papa. The shadow was facing sideways, if that makes sense, the head shape, the nose and the body structure fit on perfectly. The shadow started moving towards me on the wall. I looked towards where whatever would be cast in the shadow should have been, but there was nothing. Before the shadow reached me on the wall, I hid under my duvet in sheer panic. I waited a few minutes under my duvet, wondering if grief had grabbed hold of me and was now messing with me,

but then I heard this smashing noise, like glass. My lamp went out completely. I never came out from underneath my duvet. I ended up falling asleep under there. The next morning I woke up and my room was eerily cold. I got out of bed and looked around my room, thinking back to last night and what I saw. I put it to my mind just playing tricks on me.

I went downstairs to speak to my mum, and she asked how I slept. I explained to her I was up until stupid hours again, as she knew I was struggling to sleep. She looked at me to ask if I heard anything last night. I looked at her of the confused, expression, then shook my head. She told me she heard something like glass breaking, and then it hit me. I remember my lamp going out along with the sound of glass breaking. I looked at her sheepishly,

as I thought she'd never believe my experience, but I told her what I heard and what I saw. She looked at me with a concerned face and asked me to bring the lamp downstairs. She wanted to unscrew the bottom and look at the bolt. I agreed and ran upstairs to grab it, and then came back down. My mum unscrewed the bottom of the lamp and began to take it out. As soon as a reasonable size gap opened up, shards of glass fell out onto the table. My heart fell out of my ass, and my mind was going a million miles a minute, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. I didn't sleep in my room that night.

I grabbed my sleeping bag and slept on my mum's bedroom floor. I guess I thought I'd feel safe in there, but I was wrong. The following night I was tossing and turning trying to sleep. My mum was already asleep so I didn't have the luxury of staying up. I didn't want to wake her. As I stared at the ceiling, I heard a voice. All alright, Talulabelle? That was how John greeted me.

Talia LaBelle was a nickname he'd called me. I shot up and looked around the room and there was just silence. I told myself that I was losing it and there was no way that was real. I tried to calm down and eventually fell asleep. Over the next few months, weird things were happening around the house. Lights were turning on and off by themselves. The TV would occasionally turn on by itself, and my cat would randomly puff up and hiss at nothing. It was becoming too much, and I didn't know what to do or think. I just knew it wasn't normal. I don't know how to explain it really, but one day everything just

stopped No more weird shadows No more lights randomly turning on and off Nothing The day after I think stopped I was told by a family member That my grand had gone and spread my Papa John's ashes Without telling most of my family

Without telling me Anger took over me I'll put my hands up and say that I absolutely lost my shit And probably wasn't the best thing to do at the time But I didn't care I was hurt, angry and felt once again I had just lost my papa. That night I went to bed angry and fell asleep, and this is where the dream started. I was sitting at the dinner table in my own house.

There is no light and no one else is around. I heard the chair beside me move, and someone sat beside me. It was him. It was John. He looked at me and said, All all right? Talio Lebel? My eyes filled up with tears.

and I gave John the biggest hug I could. Now listen, I know you're upset, but I need you to be strong for me. You know that, right? He said to me. I looked at him and nodded, and as soon as he had appeared, he got up from the chair and vanished. I woke up with tears rolling down my face, but I wasn't sad.

I felt at ease. I felt content. Since that night I have had occasional dreams that involve John visiting me and talking to me. I am aware this could be my subconscious making these things up in my head, but honestly I don't think it is. I think it's John visiting me. Whenever we talked, he'd always ask me how the family were, how my grandma was. I think the most memorable dream I had was when I was in a strange log cabin, and there was an old ham radio, and John's voice came through. He was telling me he was proud of me.

how happy he was that I was growing up, and the best part for me was him telling me how tall I got him. The women in my family are all quite short, but somehow genetics helped me tell them all. I often think back to that first night with a shadow, and to this day I am still on the fence on whether this was all reality, or if my mind was playing a huge series of tricks on me. I grew up in rural East Texas, in a plain house in the middle of a huge pasture. We didn't really have neighbours and both the land we lived on and the cows we cared for were both passed down through my family's generations. Over the years I've had several odd experiences in that house.

The first I can remember was constantly waking up with the sheets on my bed being pulled off to one side. At the time I was sleeping on the bottom bunk of a two bunk bed, the top bunk being vacant. Every other night I would wake up to the covers having been pulled towards the side next to my bedroom wall. Until one night I woke up from a dream and thought I had felt the covers tugged towards that same side I laid there for a moment and I felt it tug again I immediately burst out of my bed and ran across the house to my parents' room I made my dad sleep with me for the rest of the night

even though he didn't believe anything I was saying when I got older and graduated to a full-sized bed the sheets and covers continued to mysteriously remove themselves Some mornings all of them would be on the floor, and others just the sheets, or just the covers. I toss and turn at night, but it always struck me as odd that such a selective amount could be on the floor, and the other remain on the bed. I can also recall one night where I had just retired to bed and turned off my lights, only to hear my dad coming down the hallway towards my room.

My parents' house has wood flooring, and my dad's work boots made a very distinct sound as he walked around. I heard his boots stop at my doorway and I laid there waiting for him to tell me he needed help with the land or around the house in the morning as he often did but it was silent I rose up and saw that my open doorway was empty I didn't think much of it and lay back down

I closed my eyes and barely a moment had passed after I laid my head on my pillow and I felt a soft but deliberate at fud on the foot of my bed. I bolted upright only to be met again with empty darkness. My parents have actually just finished redoing the flooring in the house, because it wasn't laid down properly the first time, when my sister and I were little. This made it much creakier in corners, so I know it wasn't my dad having a go at me by sneaking around. He isn't the type to pull those sorts of pranks either. There was another instance shortly after that, where I had my

first and only experience with sleep paralysis. It was in the morning and the broad daylight outside had entered my room. I woke up on my back and couldn't move, but I could see around my room and hear my parents shuffling around in the kitchen. I started to feel an invisible pressure on my feet that gradually slid up my entire body until I could barely breathe from the phantom weight. I tried to yell out or move but couldn't. The whole thing must have lasted for two or three minutes, but I still remember the immense pressure and the feeling of utter helplessness.

I've since moved out to my parents' house, but my mum and my sister still call me from time to time to tell me about something new that's happened in the house, particularly in and near my old room. My sister has told me she's heard knocking outside her room, and on the headboard of her bed. My mum told me that my sister's boyfriend once stayed the night in my old room

and woke up to find the jeans he had put on the floor were soaking wet in the morning. There wasn't a leak, and he hadn't gotten them wet prior to retiring for the night. For a while, some of my college textbooks had been left on the floor in boxes at one side of my room. The last time I tried sleeping in there, I heard what sounded like a textbook being opened,

and the pages being quickly fluttered before shutting. I made no argument or fuss when I got out of bed and slept on the couch that night. I've had other strange and sometimes chilling moments in my life at the places I've lived and worked since leaving my childhood home. Phantom bangs at a bakery I used to work at, a door shaking violently at me, even audible whispers being breathed directly in my ear at the apartment my partner and I reside in now.

None of them have been as consistent as my old room though. It wasn't until writing this down that I realised I haven't even had any episodes of my bed covers being removed in the night since sleeping somewhere else. I think it also might be prudent to point out that my parents built the house they live in and no one else has ever lived in the house or come close to dying on the property. I can't help but feel somewhat responsible for whatever is happening at my parents' house. I have always been attracted to the paranormal and I've always been more spiritually open

than my parents would have preferred I know now that you can easily attract things to you if you give it enough thought and dedication I've been thinking about looking into everything lately I'd like to know if it's something about me that's been attracting all these experiences or if I just have happened to find myself at the right place at the right time

of all my experiences I've never seen anything It's only ever been noises or faint touches here and there. That's something I can't help but feel like I'm eventually going to stumble into, however. I'm not sure whether my stories are sensational enough to be included in one of your episodes, but I wanted to send it in nonetheless. I hope that someone can relate to what I've shared, and that they can find the same solace I take in hearing what others have to share.

My interest in the paranormal was instilled at a young age. Both my mother and hers have had experiences, seen things, being part of the unexplained. If my mum will consent, I will share hers, but for now we'll examine mine. I was a goth kid in the 90s. What I mean by that is not just my musical taste. Yes, I was shrouded in blacken lace, a practitioner of wicker, trying to teach myself in the Bible belt. I frequented old places and, yes, had romantic conquests in graveyards. I was all but desperate to know the spirit world, to have my own relationship with the unknown.

I sought it out in English castles and Civil War battlegrounds and forts. I never had so much as a cold breeze brush my neck. I kept looking anyway, my black painted fingernails on a pale hand, trying to reach out in offering. Searching. Anyway, 30ish years ago, I moved in with my girlfriend in Chicago, much to the chagrin of her mother when she found out I wasn't just a friend who happened to be a girl. It was a month maybe too into this arrangement that I was being driven out to a supposedly paranormal hotspot. Outside of the city there is a forest where the mob used to perform executions and dump bodies.

I cannot recall the exact place we stopped any longer. The memories of that day are a bit of a whirlwind and you will soon understand why. So the three of us, firm believers that they have had. had to be something more beyond mere human sight, get out of the car. I want to say this was mid-November. We were all decked out and our black levers and such. This was before our phones were able to do more than make a phone call or very pricey text messages. They simply wanted to show me some place sightings have been reported and rumours of the streets still spoke of. We were there about 20 minutes, still within eye shot of the car when it happened. I remember I started

hearing this thumping sound. There was no visible source for this, and it steadily started getting louder and faster. Our sister had a camera and was taken dreadfully gothic black and white photos when I inquired of my company if they could hear that sound. The answer was no, and the sound continued as the grey sky seemed to be getting darker, as though some storm was suddenly swooping in on us. Again, they perceived nothing. I never saw anything else, never heard anything else. In short order I realised that the sound was my heartbeat. As my heart steadily began to pound, I felt a sense of urgency boarding on panic.

We had to leave this place. We had to go. Now. Something was horribly dreadfully wrong. And we had to be somewhere else. The two were more than amused and teased me a little bit at first. But as I turned pale, Okay, paler.

And my panic kept rising. I finally got them into the car and away we went. The further we got, the calmer and more perplexed I became. I have no understanding of what happened. But the why of it was more clear when we arrived home. Our's niece, a child of five years old that I hadn't even met yet, had passed away at the time of my experience. Suddenly, unexpectedly.

Since that day I have been, perhaps unfortunately, able to not predict exactly, but I have an awareness of some deaths that have occurred within my own family, and one or two are people close to the ones I feel the closest connection with at the time. I have never gone back there. I feel there is no need. Whatever oddness or awareness of death and the beyond has lingered, the key was turned and door opened, though I was rather hoping to meet a fay or be able to be able to. able to speak with those lost or something, but an intermittent connection with the Great Equalizer is what I was given. Mum always said knowledge is power, but that's it. That's my major spook event. No wailing spirits, no apparition, no real anything beyond my attunement. Again, understand that this isn't spooky enough or the right flavour, but this is the first time I've ever shared this experience with anyone.

It feels cleansing really. Before this experience, I would have been proclaiming where powers or whatever and trying to be oh so cool. After it, I feel no need. It is what it is. It didn't and hasn't saved anyone. It hasn't changed the world. I don't know what this is, but it's mine.

And I'm grateful. I have something special to share that viewers on the channel may find interesting. It's one of the strangest things I've ever seen. so here's my story. I was working as an EMT in a small town in New England. As an EMT, we can get called out during any hour of the day for cases that range from a headache to cardiac arrest. Luckily, this was something a bit tamer.

My partner and I were on a transfer call for a liver from one nearby hospital to another in an ambulance. We dropped after liver, and when we started going back, it was around 10pm. We had dispatch on and radio chatter from nearby ambulances, and 911 call centres was going through, just in case we have to take any more calls. This will tie in a bit later.

To get back to our ambulance station, we had to take the back roads that led up to this hill, with our town and station just down it. That wasn't until I noticed the bright white light in the side mirror. I assumed it was just a dumbass with the higher beams on. However, the light kept getting brighter and brighter, until our cabin was flooded in this intense bright white light. I looked at my partner and told him to speed up.

I tried looking back to see what was making the white light, but it was too bright to make anything out. At some point, the radio chatter on dispatch began to sound scratchy, until it was almost completely incomprehensible. I was already uneased. Now I was terrified. So was my partner. We tried to get in contact with our home station but nothing went through.

A few moments later, ahead of us was the lights of the town, which seemed to deter the lights from whatever was chasing off. It started to dim rapidly. I looked back to take a look at what was making the lights, and what I saw was a black triangle silhouette, with red, yellow and purple lights at each corner of the craft. As we descended into the town it slowly disappeared from view. My partner and I discussed it all the way back to the station

and agreed to keep it between him and I. I told one of a person however and they suggested ideas of UFOs which brought a shiver down my spine. I used to call myself a sceptic in the paranormal but distested my views. My father has always honoured a profound passion for heritage which led him to acquire a small fort to nested. in the heart of Rajasthan, known as the land of the kings.

Rajasthan is celebrated for its majestic palaces, grand forts, and rich tumultuous history. This particular fort was bestowed by a former ruler upon a minor noble family, serving as a distinct outpost and a small stronghold in times of conflict. Constructed over two centuries ago, it remained in the hands of that family until my father purchased it. Following India's independence and the consequent decline of royal power, the fort's upkeep has suffered. It was only through my father's painstaking restoration efforts that the fort regained its former splendor. I should note we are merely commoners, with no noble lineage or royal blood to boast of. Since my father's acquisition of the property, my parents and I would spend the winter months there during my school holidays.

Gradually year by year, the restoration progressed. The fort is encircled by a quaint village, situated five kilometres from the nearest town. The villagers harbour numerous superstitions about ghosts and spirits that supposedly haunt the fort. Annually, the village hosts a festival during which it is believed that the spirit of a long-lost saint possesses one of the villages, sending them into a trance. Our fort's caretaker once claimed to have seen a shadowy figure wandering on the rooftop. The fort is also the site of a sati ritual, an ancient Hindu practice where a widow would immolate herself on her husband's funeral pile. This practice was more prevalent among nobility, and one of the fort's rooms bears witness to such a tragic event. The sound of gungroos, anklet bells traditionally worn by women, often resonate through the night, adding an eerie, haunting melody to the atmosphere.

During the restoration, my father added a room on the roof, connected to the original structure by a wall. This was the sole structural addition to the fort. On one occasion while spending the night there with my parents, we distinctly heard the sound of anklet bells, loud and clear, as if it were just outside the door. Now for the peace de resistance. One particular unsettling night, my parents, sister and I were sleeping in the ground floor room. It was a calm still night, devoid of any wind. My parents and I, all afflicted with insomnia, lay awake, peering into the pitch-black night of our room. This room features five doors, all facing the courtyard in front, which formerly served as a stable.

Across the courtyard lies a gallery that connects our courtyard to another. My father displays his cherished antiques in this gallery, all secured under locking key behind. glass frames. That night the three of us heard a distinct thump, followed by the shattering of glass. We were alone in the fort. The sound unmistakably emanated from the gallery. Concerned about the potential damage to my father's treasured collection, we were nevertheless reluctant to venture out into the dark, eerie fort. The darkness seemed to thicken, enveloping the fort in a sinister embrace. Every creek and Russell seemed amplified. as if the fort itself was whispering secrets of its haunted past.

The following morning, with daylight offering a semblance of courage, we discovered one of the cases had an open lock but a closed frame. A painting had fallen to the floor, but fortunately was unharmed. It depicted our deity, Krishna, with his beloved consort, Rada, positioned directly in front of the door. it was as if some unseen force had deliberately placed it there to be found. In response, we summoned a priest to perform rituals for our well-being and prosperity. The priest spoke of lingering spirits and restless souls, further deepening our unease.

We remain uncertain about the cause of the incident and continue to pray that no malevolent forces bring us harm. My mother insists on selling the fort, but my father's unwavering dedication and efforts make this a difficult decision. Though we do not reside there permanently, we continue to spend about two months each year at the fort, tents of any face-to-face encounter with whatever else may reside there. I was born in Tennessee, and when I was two, my family had to move to Washington State, near Vancouver. We lived there for 12 years of my life. Nothing strange happened until I was 10. I started seeing things, hearing things, and feeling constantly watched. I was playing my guitar one day when I heard and saw a shadow figure, opened my bedroom

door out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look at it and nothing was there, and my door was closed. This became normal, seeing shadow figures out of the corner of my eyes. But at 11, I started hearing screams and cries for help. I genuinely thought I was going crazy. I didn't tell anyone, but then the sleep paralysis started. I would wake up. up, unable to move, and I'd see a black mass the size of a six-year-old child, no eyes, all just black. It was slowly walked towards me, lifting its arms to touch me, speaking my name and asking for help. Then I would move and it would be gone. I didn't know about sleep paralysis at the time. Only when I was 15 did I learn about it. These things plagued me until I was 13, when all of a sudden it stopped.

I felt normal, sane, safe. We moved back to the same city in Tennessee I was born in a couple of months before my 14th birthday. I knew about the rules of Appalachia, but I didn't believe in those things or the paranormal for that matter. Late in 2020, I met my now husband and a girl who I thought would be my best friend, but she changed my look on so many things. Let's call her Nexus. She believed in the paranormal. She believed she could befriend it.

See it. Hear it. Even be followed by it. I thought she was some weird Chicago girl, for that's where she came from. But she was cool, so I went along with her strange ideas. For her first sleepover, I went to her house. She lived out in the country and had her whole forest for a backyard.

I grew up as an outdoors person. I loved the woods, but these were different. I didn't want to go into them. They looked sick. I know I can survive alone in the forest, but for some reason I wouldn't dare spend one night in her woods alone. And I know you don't go into the woods without a gun, but somehow I knew that wouldn't be enough to save me. Late that night we were talking and she told me about these two things that looked like people. One was a tall man with a dog, and the other was a woman, whose face she couldn't make out.

She said they weren't human or spirits, but one was bad and the other was good. I thought she had an overactive imagination. That's what I chalked my mental stuff up to. She broke a rule. For those who know, you know. She left her bedroom window blinds open and would constantly look out the window. I never did. I always felt watched and didn't want to see what was out there,

so I would beg her to close the blinds. before turning off the lights. She didn't want to, but finally she did. As we were sitting on her bed, I heard a dog walking in the house, but it sounded reversed, yet coming closer to her door. All of the dogs were outside.

I thought I was hearing things again. But then she asked me if I heard that, and she describes it in the same way. I said I was ready for bed and turned off the light and went to bed on the floor that was provided for me to sleep on. I closed my eyes and tried hard to fall asleep. When I felt a dog lay on my feet, a big dog. I opened my eyes and she was on her bed, and nothing was at my feet.

Except there were indents on the sheets. I could move so it wasn't sleep paralysis. I stayed still and closed my eyes. That thing stayed there all night. But come day it was gone. Later that day she told me that the man stood at her bed until she fell asleep. I was scared. Now I'm a Christian girl, but I don't believe a demon can ever have me as long as I have faith.

These weren't demons. The next time I was at her house I saw a drawing journal, so I looked through it. I found drawings of the woman with her face scribbled over and an attempt of the man and dog. They looked like the creepy kid drawing. you see in horror movies. The next sleepover at her place something happened. It was one or two in the morning. We were just casually talking about normal stuff like art, sewing plants, when all of a sudden there was this raw mixed with a boom. Here in the south our thunder can shake a house and it rolls throughout the sky. But this was not thunder. The sky was clear and it sounded different.

We both grabbed each other's hands and held tightly. Now I'm a straight girl and that was the first time I'd held a female's hand, we were so scared. We both looked at each other and started crying. Finally, we turned off the lights and stayed in the bed together until sleep took us. The next day we asked her mum if she heard thunder or a loud boom. She said no.

None of her family did. We went around the house to try and recreate the sound, dropping buckets, wood, hitting things. Nothing sounded like that. Fourth of July 2021, my family had a ton of people out to our house, including Nexus and her family. That night she told me they followed her to my home, the man and the woman. I hoped they would leave with her. The man didn't.

Three or four weeks later I was walking my dog before bed. It was dark and we had some woods to the side of our house. I stayed on the front porch and normally my dog would go on the grass and do his business. He refused to leave the porch I thought that was odd And then I looked up to my left Where the woods were Where my dog was looking

And there in the shadow of the tree line Was a tall man I couldn't make out his features Then my dog ran to the front door And I ran with him We went inside and locked the door And I went to my room with my dog Closed my blinds and slept with the light on

My dog was shaking and the fact he knew something was there before me, and that scared me more. Then my sleep paralysis started coming back. The same childlike figure. My woods felt more dangerous now. My dog wouldn't go in, so I didn't either. Now this dog, I've had him since I was eight years old. He slept with me, stays by my side and loves the woods.

If he doesn't go somewhere, neither do I. Nexus then told me it feels like the man, and the woman were beckoning her to go into the woods at night. I told her not to. I told her not to trust them. I don't know if she ever did, or if she even believes in these things now. She and I parted ways when I was late 16 or early 17. I got the name Nexus from her. It was the name she gave herself. Shortly before my husband and I got married, I told him all of these things. I said, you probably think I'm crazy. He actually believed me and still does. He knows there's a whole world of things we humans don't understand.

Neither of us believe in ghosts, but we know there are things that reside in nature that are not meant for humans to meet. Now that we're married, if I suffer from sleep paralysis or night terrors, he'll hold me and help me sleep again. Many of my night terrors I end up hurting him. I don't mean to, and he doesn't hold it against me. If he knows it'll be a rough night for me, he'll make me a herbal tea with honey that naturally improve sleep.

and usually I sleep well on those nights. Occasionally I will still hear things or if I go to historical sites I can feel the residual energy of those who came before us. I always could do that even as a child. I haven't seen things since being married though

and moving into our own place but I'm waiting I know it hasn't ended yet one last note I don't take medications or I've never been diagnosed with anything mental so what happens to me I genuinely believe is not my imagination. In the summer of 2014, my four-year-old daughter, 10-month-old son and I moved into a home in the quiet neighbourhood, Sagan Ranch, in Killeen, Texas.

My then husband was in the army and was away for training in Georgia when the kids and I moved in. I want to note that I found this house online and was captivated by the pictures of the empty rooms in the listing. I would often look at them several times in a trance-like state. It was almost almost as if I was somehow transported there while staring at the pictures. In my mind I was there in every way, as if I were there in person. I could feel with surroundings around me, and it just felt like home, exactly where I was meant to be, where I wanted to be. Almost immediately after moving in, things began to happen.

Suttly at first, but that wouldn't last long, for this house had a story to tell, and it was determined that I listen. My mother who lived in San Antonio, Texas, kept the kids for a week so I could unpack. The first incident occurred the moment she left. After unpacking a few boxes downstairs, I began to carry items upstairs, and that's when I saw two small children out of the corner of my eye, a young boy and a girl.

Shaking it off as just being tired from the move. However, I kept seeing them. They were both expressionless. The boy wore a collared long-sleeved shirt and pants with suspenders. The girl had long curly hair, half up and tied with a ribbon. She wore a dress that I guessed was Victorian. At first I was afraid because after seeing them I felt very uneasy whenever I went upstairs. I felt something was with me, but I did not believe it was the children.

After moving boxes upstairs for a while, I got used to them, and talked to them as I walked up the steps. I almost felt comforted that they were there, as if they were there to protect me. After a while I called it quits and turned in for the night. The next morning, as I began my day and continued unpacking, I never saw the little boy or girl again. I chalked it up to just needing a good night's sleep and stress from the move. A week passed and my kids returned to stay with me. A few weeks passed without incident And I just put the kids down for the night

My husband would be arriving home late that night So I decided to watch a movie while I waited for him Halfway through the film I heard a loud fud From what appeared to be upstairs Ignoring it at first I kept my focus on the movie Within seconds I heard the sound again This time I decided to go upstairs and check on the kids

pausing the film I headed upstairs. Nothing seemed out of place. I checked on both my kids who were peacefully sleeping and seemed undisturbed by the sound. Returning downstairs to the living room, I resumed my movie. Minutes passed and I heard the sound again. This time it felt as if it shook the whole house. The thunderous fud did not sound like it was coming from upstairs anymore.

It sounded like whatever was causing the noise was on the roof. and was powerful enough to shake the house. I immediately paused the film, sitting there momentarily, trying to process what was happening and shaking off my nerves. Not sure what was happening, I continued watching the movie, knowing my husband would be home shortly. As soon as I resumed the film, the sound appeared again, and if I paused the film, the house went quiet.

I played with this, noticing that if I ignored it, the sound would be. repeat. I felt as if whatever was causing the noise was playing with me. It wanted my attention and if I chose to ignore it, it would continue to seek it. My husband walked through the door a little past midnight. I told him about what I had experienced. He told me it was probably thunder or a tree hitting the roof. However, we had no trees around us, not on our lot or the lot next to us, and it was a calm, clear night. Shortly up, After our discussion, we went to bed.

Again, weeks would go by without incident until one night. I was surprised to see our dog stopped in front of the wall between our bedroom and the linen closet doors. She sat there, staring up, as if looking at someone. I called her several times, but she didn't move. Her ears didn't perk up at the sound of my voice. It was like she was in a chance. After a few moments she snapped out of it and ran straight to her kennel. I would soon learn the significance of this event.

One night my husband was upstairs in our bedroom with one of the windows opened, packing for his work trip. When he heard the fud on the lower level roof, it was loud and moving fast towards the open window. We stared at each other and he instantly closed the window. I will never forget the horror on my husband's face, and the moment. relief I felt that someone else had finally heard this. We went to bed without exchanging a word. He left in the morning and was not expected to return for eight weeks. During this period, activity ramped up. I started to hear the fud more frequently, but it seemed to move around until finally settling in a space upstairs, where three closets met, the area where my dog

had her incident. Upstairs my bedroom closet, the hall-in-closet. and my son's bedroom closet all convened. From this space I could hear loud bangs, as if something were trapped and trying to escape. Coinciding with this, my son suddenly refused to sleep in his room, and I began to feel uncomfortable with my closet, using it less and less.

The upstairs felt heavy and I dreaded being up there. The bangs continued and I began to have unusual dreams of satanic rituals. So vivid it felt like I was there. Upon waking I was paralyzed with fear To this day the dreams are etched in my mind And as I recall these events My heart races with anxiety After the dreams I noticed the shift in my mentality

Constantly thinking of reckless things to do And I didn't understand why There would be one more incident Before I would reach my breaking point My daughter was at school And I just laid my son down for a nap Not knowing how long he would stay asleep in his room I decided to pay bills upstairs at my desk.

I had only been sitting there for maybe ten minutes when I heard the voice of a child, probably around six, directly in my right ear. Say, mummy. I froze. Typing this just now as I sit at my desk sends chills down my spine, and I felt overwhelmingly nauseous as the events I experienced in this home have ever woven into me. My son could only say Mama, and my daughter wasn't home.

And even then, she would never call me Mummy. I worked up the courage to move and checked on my son, who was still peacefully sleeping. I called my mum and broke down, telling her everything I had experienced since moving in. Her being Catholic, she suggested I recite the Our Father prayer throughout the home, and she would bless the house with Holy Water when she came to visit. I did my best to do this, trembling with her. fear as I walked through the home, reciting the prayer. I reached out to a local paranormal group asking for help. I can't remember the group's name, but I knew they were a few hours away,

and it would be a few weeks before they could come for an investigation. My family visited for Halloween, and my mum blessed the home with Holy Water. Unfortunately, I don't remember anything after. I've tried to recall the events after Halloween, but I just can't. All I see is a black screen in my head. The next memory after that is living in a new house about three miles away. Over the years, that house creeps back into my mind and consumes me. I have a strong urge to return to it, and I feel one day I will find myself parked outside its front door. It's like I'm drawn to it, like it's calling me. I long to understand what's happened there and to know the story of the dark energy that resides there. I requested the police records of the property and found nothing

other than a domestic disturbance between a mother and her daughter. I have attempted to contact residents living there after us, inquiring if they have experienced anything unusual, but had no luck there either. I am a history major and an aspiring historian, so naturally I began researching the land and surrounding areas with a colleague. We discovered the Maxdale Bridge and Cemetery, which is 13 miles from the house on Scorn Drive. My colleague and I are still researching the area, trying to piece together what could have caused the events I experienced. I've begun to write a book about my experiences,

and hopefully I will finally be able to get closure, or at least as much closure as a house will allow. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I hope someone will hear it and help shed some light. There's an old castle located between the mountains in the quiet midlands of Ireland. Kinety Castle. I worked there as a barman during my college years. It has been home to a castle since at least the 1200s,

switching hands from the Normans to the Augustines, then to Gaelic tribes, a Catholic monastery, and later to English colonialists. It served as a college at one point two, before later becoming a hotel and wedding venue. so a lot of history and bloodshed. Local historians claim that prior to all this history, however, the area was a deeply important druidic site,

forming a sort of triumvirate with two other druid sites in the area, which are now castles too. The site was reported to allegedly be haunted, but then again what old Irish castle isn't. I generally understood it to be a bit of folklore, a spooky Halloween story at most and nothing more. And for the first half of my two years there, I saw and heard nothing to challenge that notion. Anyways, one night a group of American tourists were staying, numbering about 10 in total.

With the head of the gang informing me that his full-time employment over in the States was that of a spirit medium. Now, while this might sound eerie, working in a location like that at peak tourist times of the year, we regularly met ghost hunting guests who would come to try and have their own friends. paranormal experience. Paranormal tourists would regularly visit the place, so this was nothing out of the ordinary by any means. A lot of these sorts too, I might add, tended to have active imaginations, to put it mildly. I'm a firm believer that if you go to a place like that with the intention of seeing a ghost, well, you'll see a ghost, regardless of whether anything has happened or not. In my time there I found the vast majority of supposed paranormal experiences to all be in people's heads.

Like if a draught of air closed the door in your home you wouldn't blink twice. But if it happens in a place like this, you assume it must be ghosts. We often got a laugh out of the numerous cases of periodolia. When people would send us pictures they had taken, claiming there were faces in the trees, or the shadows of people or whatever. and they quite literally never were. Anyways, the gentleman leading the group informed us that he intended to speak with the spirits in the castle during their stay. He was apparently a well-renowned medium who made a living from this.

The whole group were also dressed in what I can only compare to Native American dress, though I couldn't necessarily tell if they were Native Americans themselves. I paid no heed either way, welcomed them, and brought their bags to their rooms, receiving a very generous tip for doing so. I should add that tipping is not customary in Ireland, particularly rare the further you go from the cities. So this was pleasantly unexpected. This same group had booked out the castle's drawing room

for a private function later that night. I distinctly recall passing by at one point where one of them stepped out to use the bathroom to see them sitting in a circle, meditating, with black candles lit around the periphery. Again, odd, but not as out of place as you might think in a place like this. I've had guests using EVP equipment before, for example,

and I'd come across more than one using a Ouija board. The following day there was a wedding taking place in the castle, and by the time I arrived in work, the ghost hunters had checked out, and I had all but forgotten about them. At about 3am, after the wedding guests had mostly gone to bed, the exhaustive task of clearing the entire empty banquet hall on my own began. I should add this hall dates back to the 1600s, and there are a series of flat stone markers in the ground,

where the graves of monks were found, when they renovated it several years ago. As I was finishing up the last few tasks, I recall hearing creaking floorboards on the balcony, an overflow area above the entrance to the hall, therefore of the number of guests exceed 200. As I peered up, suddenly I heard the distinctive sound of footprints, albeit very muffled from up there. These footsteps then slowly descended the stairs and moved all the way down the long hall until they arrived at the far end by the bar.

I remember so clearly just following the noise with my head as it moved down the long hall. I should explain at this point that the bar on the far end of the hall has three large methammed. grid attached to the roof above. When in use these are pulled up and tied with chains, which also hang from the roof. When not in use, the bars are pulled down and locked into place to the bar, with the chains then hanging freely. A rudimentary but effective means of keeping any would-be burglars from getting into the alcohol stash, basically. As the steps got to the bar, those chains began shaking violently. It terrified the light. It terrified the light. out of me. I dashed out the door and across the courtyard at the bar in a dungeon, where the last

few stragglers at the wedding were drunkenly sipping, and usually spilling the remainder of their pints. I told my fellow bartender there what had happened. He laughed, agreeing to come and help me close up, and told me I was jumping at shadows. I practically finished up the cleaning holding his hand. Together, we didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. As I headed up to him, count the till. I met the bartender from the library bar, the last of the three bars in the venue, looking very pale-faced and uneasy. He informed me that while skulking off to use his phone so that he could watch the highlights of a football match when he wasn't supposed to be, he'd become aware of someone entering the bar by the door to his left, only for him to be bewildered when nobody emerged

from around the corner. This, coupled with a flickering light bulb in the chandelier above, happened half a dozen times before he got spooked enough to leave the bar, and come and hide in the more well-lit safety of the office, watching the bar on the cameras instead. Upon sitting down there, we both suddenly became aware of a scratching and tapping, happening at the window into the room. He pointed it to me and I heard it too, clear as day. Scratching. But coming from the other side of the narrow window. I should explain that this office is located on one of the turrets of the castle.

So the window is, give or take, eight to nine feet above the ground. So it was unlikely to be a person. It could have been an animal doing all the scratching and tapping. Sure. But I'd never heard anything like it and never would again. so it seems perhaps a little coincidental to only happen on this night. Plus again it's after 4 a.m., so it's very unlikely to be a bird or a similar animal. It was so bizarre, but we were inside the safety of the warm office together.

So it wasn't necessarily scary by now, but just weird. At that point we were joined by the final barman from the dungeon bar below, who now admitted that despite his joking earlier, He was now a little uneasy too, after a few similar events happened down in the dungeon. It was then that we spotted a flickering light on the CCTV feed. A setting created to inform us that the motion sensor was picking up something moving inside of the banquet hall, the same banquet hall that I had emptied and locked up. It told us that every five seconds or so, something was moving about.

before disappearing for a few seconds and returning again. A few more peculiar happenings took place that night, opening doors, tapping on tables at reception, names seemingly being called down the hall before I finally departed at around 6 a.m. It was only the day after, as I was reflecting on the events of the night, that I realised that it must have been the group of spirit mediums from the night before. they must have disturbed something

but it's not the first time something like that happened here a long-serving staff member informed me of similar events that went on for weeks after the land around the place was dug up to lay sewage pipes in the mid-1990s something had been disturbed during the excavation it had gotten so bad back then that even guests were complaining cold spots inside the castle during a summer heat wave footsteps, slamming doors, moving objects and so on. The castle staff eventually went to the church in the village and lit a candle for those of the old winter and Bernard families,

who were Protestant lords that had owned the castle back in the day. All activities ceased practically overnight, I was told. Things like this occasionally would happen there. The allegedly haunted room at the very top of the castle, even had a no-weegee board rule, because of the hassle and mess, caused for the cleaners and staff whenever people disturbed the spirits. One particular female staff member would repeatedly get it the worst, with her ponytail regularly being pulled by an unseen force,

we even had camera footage of it occurring, which, despite being spooky, tended to be quite humorous. Other young female staff would sometimes report hearing their names called too, despite them being alone there. Different mediums told staff there on a number of occasions that there were a few ghosts up there. But the one of them, a monk named Hugh, is the main one, who enjoys playing good-natured pranks on people, and has a particular affinity for women, especially the women getting married at the venue, so not quite as malicious as some haughtings, but still bizarre. This was the first and only time I witnessed any of it, however.

I was about 10 years old when this happened. I had travelled from Sweden to Poland to visit my grandparents. It was summer and I did this every year until they both passed away. One day I went outside to play with my friends. If I remember correctly, we had Yu-Gi-Karts and we played with them a lot. Near the playground, there was an abandoned building. The building belonged to my uncle. I was around three years old when he went out of business, so he abandoned it.

Since then it had been left empty. My friends wanted to play a game called Dare, and they challenged me to go into the abandoned building at night, since I didn't believe in ghosts. I thought it was an easy challenge. If I won, they promised me free McDonald's. At midnight, I snuck out of my grandparents' house and went to the playground to grab a toy for the challenge.

The goal was to enter the abandoned building, go up to the second floor and leave the toy there as proof. Standing in front of the building I told myself, Tomorrow, a big Mac for me. Then I went inside. I didn't have a flashlight, but the moon was bright that night, giving me enough light to see. I searched for the stairs and found them at the end of the hallway.

As I climbed up, I noticed broken glass covering each step. carefully I made my way to the second floor the roof was in bad shape but the moonlight illuminated the area I looked around for a place to leave the toy and spotted a big old broken mirror I crouched down and placed the toy in front of it and then it happened I was still crouching looking down at the toy when I heard a strange sound like an old man struggling to breathe, as if he were lifeless and in pain.

A chill ran down my spine and my heart started pounding. Then I heard the crunching of broken glass on the stairs, like someone was stepping on it. I tried to convince myself that my imagination was playing tricks on me, but when I looked up, I saw something in the broken mirror. pale, eyeless face, staring back at me. I froze, I wanted to run but I couldn't move away. Somehow I was completely paralysed. I shut my eyes and when I opened them again the face was gone. But I still felt like something was near me. Finally I broke free from my fear and ran. I bolted down the hallway, feeling like something was chasing me. I made it outside.

and onto the playground, gasping for breath. When I turned back towards the building, I saw it again. The same face staring at me from the second floor window. I ran as fast as I could back to my grandparents' house. I had never been so scared in my life, but at least I got my reward the next day, along with an experience I would never forget. I never did anything like that ever again.

I grew up in northern Alaska, actually all over the state, until I was 13. This story takes place in the winter of 1984 when I was 11 years old. At the time we lived in a small town called Atkasuk, home to about 250 people. Most were native except for the school teachers, my parents included. One night my parents told my two sisters and me they'd be working late at the school, so we were to put ourselves to bed. We did as we were told, and later I heard my parents come home, take off their heavy winter gear and go to bed.

Sometime after that, I woke up to knocking at my window. At first I didn't think much of it until I heard my mother's voice calling, John? Half asleep, I sat up and saw my mother standing outside, wearing her parker and motioning for me to come and lock the door. I was groggy but confused. Hadn't I already heard my parents come home?

Still, there she was, calling for me. Now, in small Alaskan towns, houses have something called a mud porch. An enclosed entryway meant to store winter gear and provide a warm spot for anyone caught in a snowstorm. The outer door to the mud porch is normally never locked. so that people can take shelter if needed. But that night, for some reason, it was. As I walked from my bedroom into the front door, I noticed something strange. Every time I passed a window, my mother was there.

Looking in, it was as if she was gliding along the outside of the house, keeping pace with me. Finally, I reached a door. I expected it to be locked, but when I turned the knob, bit opened easily. My mother stood there in the porch's dim light. She looked at me and asked, Can I come in? Something about the question made my skin crawl. And then I looked down. She was barefoot. That was all it took. Terra gripped me and I bolted back to my parents' bedroom, shaking my father awake. Something is wrong with mum, I gasped.

Then from the other side of the bed my mother sat up. What's wrong, honey? She asked groggyly. I froze. We rushed to the back door, the one I had left open, nothing was there. No footprints in the fresh snow from the night storm. Of course, my parents brushed it off as a bad dream, but I knew what I had seen. Years later, as a senior in high school, we had moved to a quiet town in the Pacific Northwest.

Our house was a two-story home at the top of a hill when my bedroom was on the second floor. One of my best friends, let's call him Joe, had a habit of sneaking over late at night. He'd use a bit of parkour to climb up and knock lightly on my window, signalling for me to let him in or to sneak out with him. One night I heard the familiar knock. I turned over in bed and saw Joe's face peering in. But something was... off. His voice was flat, emotionless, as he whispered, can I come in? Then I noticed something horrifying.

Joe wasn't standing on anything. He was floating. And worse, he was barefoot. I slammed the window shut and backed away. The knocking continued, one tap every minute over and over. Each time followed. by a whispered. John. I hid under the covers, eventually it stopped. After high school, I spent a summer in Nevada with a friend. When it was time to leave,

I drove back to Washington on a tight budget, sleeping in my car at rest stops along Highway 395. On the second night, I pulled into a remote mountain rest stop just before sunset. A family in a van was parked nearby, quiet and reserved, not the partying type.

I settled in using a blanket to block the bright moonlight. Sometime later I woke to a knocking at my window. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Still groggy, I assumed it was someone from the van. And then I heard my name whispered, John. I lifted the blanket and looked out. It was my sister. Every hair on my body stood on end

Knock, knock, knock, knock I froze unable to move And then the knocking stopped A moment later I heard the knocking on the van A door creaked open and a scream Several streams The van's engine wrought a life and they sped away Tires kicking up dust

shaking I looked out again my mother stood at my window John she whispered let me in I yanked a blanket over my head and stayed there until dawn at forty-five I bought my first house a nice two-story place with a crawl space beneath it at first I only visited on weekends but eventually I moved in

a few weeks after settling in I was drifting off to sleep when I heard it knock, knock, knock, and then a whisper, John. I turned to look out the window and saw an old friend who had passed away. Go away, I said firmly, I'm not letting you in. It glided around the corner, moving sideways, so I could see its face the entire time, and then vanished. At 47, I had been. been in the relationship with Jill for a year. She had a nine-year-old son and while they didn't live

with me full time, they stayed over a few nights a week. One night while sleeping at her house, awoke to Jill nudging me. John, I heard something. Then the knock. We both turned to the window and there stood my mother. John, she whispered. Jill sat up rubbing her eyes. Oh, it's my ex-husband. He must want to talk. She started getting up. I grabbed her wrist. Wait, look at his feet.

She did. Barefoot. Her face went pale. I turned to the thing at the window and said, Go away, we're not letting you in. It drifted backwards and disappeared behind the fence. That night, Jill's son, staying at a friend's house called her in tears.

Mum, dad came to my window, but I don't think it was him. We told him to stay put. That night I told Jill everything. She was furious at first. How could I bring this thing into their lives? But in the end she understood. Years have passed, Jill's son is now in high school. One night he called me at 2 a.m.

It came again, he said. Who did it look like? I asked. My ex-girlfriend, he replied. Guilt washed over me. I'm sorry I brought this thing to you. His response shocked me. It's okay, you make my mum happy. If this is the cost, then I'm good.

I told him the same thing I had learned long ago. No matter what it looks like, never let it in. I haven't seen it since. that night with Jill, but she has. Her mother, father, even an old boyfriend. It only happens when we sleep apart. I hope I never see it again, but I know deep down that I will. I was still pretty young when this happened. I think I was between the ages of about eight or ten. I'm over 40 now, but still remember it clearly. Just a little backstory before I go on with my story. I'm half Dutch and half Chinese. Before reaching my teenage years, I would always see a coloured spot with a diameter of maybe three centimetres floating around, like you looked into a bright light for a while.

I would play with this spot like trying to catch it with my hands. One day my Chinese aunt asked me what I was doing, when she saw me trying to catch something that she couldn't see. I told her what I saw and she went quiet and let me be. After a couple of days, my dad, who was also Chinese, wanted to talk to me about the spot. I was seeing and told me that what I was seeing was a guardian angel and that it would protect me. Sometime later, it could be weeks or months, the only part I don't remember clearly. My parents were at work in the restaurant below the apartment we lived in. I was laying in my parents' bed trying to sleep. I used to do this often because I had nightmares on a regular basis. While

laying in bed, I was staring at the shadow of the small chandelier they had in their bedroom. It was the early 90s so it was normal seeing those where I lived. A nightlight wasn't enough for me, so the ceiling light was always on when I went to bed. At some point the shadow of the chandelier started to warp and change, and at that moment it was like I was frozen, probably from fear because the shadow started to get bigger. It became like somewhat human-shaped with arms and a head. It was as wide as a two-person bed and probably half the length of it, probably only because the chandelier was hanging partially over the bed.

Where the eyes should be, I could see the white of our ceiling. Then suddenly I saw the coloured spot that I always saw, and it attached itself to the edge of the shadow. Then I saw another spot and another, and they kept appearing and attaching themselves to the shadow until it was completely. completely surrounded. After an unknown amount of time felt like forever at the moment, the spot slowly merged into one at the base of the chandelier, while taking the shadow with it. After that, I saw the one spot again that I always used to see.

After things went back to normal, I fell asleep very fast, probably because of being exhausted from what has just happened. Weird things still happen now and then after that instance. And even after becoming an adult and losing sight of my coloured spot for a long time. My parents' first home was a duplex owned by my great-grandmother and great-grandfather in upstate New York. Each floor was its own separate home. My mum and dad lived upstairs while my great-grandmother lived downstairs. My great-grandfather had passed away years before I was born. The details of his passing are a little fuzzy to me without my grandmother around to give me exact dates. But I do know he never met anyone from my generation, myself or my cousins.

By the time of this story, my great-grandmother was also not very mobile. She could still use the stairs, but not quickly. And she needed a walker to get around. Anyone who's heard one before knows the distinct clicking sound they make when in use. On this particular night, my parents were finally going out. for the evening, leaving me just a few months old with my aunt as my babysitter. At that age I was the kind of baby who could go from calm to full meltdown in an instant. My aunt followed my usual night-time routine, settled me down and everything seemed fine. It was around 8 or 9 p.m. when she was in the

living room, and I was in my crib down the hall. She had the baby monitor on so she could hear me. At some point I had started crying. As she got up, up to come and soothe me, she distinctly heard someone whisper, shh, through the monitor. And then, I stopped crying. She went into my room and found me completely calm, happily staring at the side of the crib facing away from the door, as if someone was standing there, making faces or gestures to entertain me. Concerned, she went downstairs to check on my great-grandmother, wondering if she had somehow made it to my room and back down again. But when she asked, my great-grandmother said she hadn't even heard me crying.

When my aunt went back to check on me, I was still happily watching something, or someone, near the crib. Twice more that night before my parents came home, I got fussy, and both times the same sh-sh sound came through the monitor, and I calmed down immediately. Later, we found out, my aunt much sooner than I did obviously, that my great-grandfather had actually passed away in bed in that home. We believed it was him, keeping me company and helping babysit on my parents first night out after I was born. The first experience happened nine or ten years ago when I was very young.

After my family moved out of Devon, my dad went up north for work and my mum and I ended up living with her friends in London. Around the same time my mum's friends moved near Hull and I didn't see them again for years until I was about eight. When we went to visit them, my mum and I took a trip to a stately home, Burton Agnes Hall. After a while I got bored and wandered off on my own. I eventually found myself in a room called the Justice Room, which had a bedroom off to one side and a corridor leading away on the other. I stopped. I wasn't sure why, but I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling that someone was watching me. At first, I thought maybe I had subconsciously registered a mirror, but there wasn't one.

A little while later, my mum arrived and asked, do you want to go into the bedroom? Without hesitation, I refused. I had no real explanation. I just knew there was something wrong with that room. My mum seemed surprised but didn't press the issue and we moved on. Later, we came across a guide telling a story about a young woman who was murdered by ruffians in the 1620s. Before she died, she had asked for her skull to remain in the house. But her sisters buried her in the churchyard instead.

Soon after the house was plagued by violent poltergeist activity, it only stopped when her skull was exhumed and brought back in the house. inside. They say she never left. It's rumoured that she dislikes renovation work, and volunteers have even been known to warn the empty air before making any changes to the house. I might have dismissed the whole story, if it weren't for one eerie detail. She died in the very bedroom I refused to enter. The second encounter was brief but unsettling. About three or four years ago, I was in a car driving down a country, road in New Addington on a sunny afternoon.

Suddenly I saw someone running towards a private road that led to a static caravan site. Their movement was slightly unsteady and they were dressed in what looked like 20th century air force clothing. Something about the site struck me as odd. Then in the split second it took to look down from the road where they had been. They were gone. It was impossible for anyone, let alone someone unsteady on their feet, to have disappeared that fast. The road was open.

There was nowhere to hide. Curious, I looked it up a few moments ago, just for a laugh. What I found made my blood run cold. Apparently, a shot-down, injured German pilot is said to haunt the area. My grandparents used to own a deli in South Buffalo, with several apartment units attached. For a while my sister lived in one of those apartments and I would occasionally stay over in the spare bedroom, usually after a night of playing cards and partying. The spare room had a door that always closed perfectly. No effort was needed, you just pushed it shut and it would latch every time. But the strange thing was you would never, ever find it closed. No matter how certain you were that you had shut it, it would always be ajar when you returned.

Even stranger I often caught glimpses of movement near the door out of the corner of my eye. Just subtle shifts like something was there. But when I turned my head to look directly, nothing was ever there. One night I went to sleep in that room, as I had many times before. My dog curled up next to me on the bed. Sometime later I woke up to the sound of her growling. Her body tense. the hair on her back standing up, and then I heard the door open.

But when I looked, I could see it was still shut. The moonlight streamed in through the curtainless windows, cast in long shadows across the room. I listened, frozen. Footsteps. Seven, maybe eight or nine, crossed the room towards the closet. And then... Silence. The dog eventually calmed down and though I was thoroughly freaked out, I somehow managed to fall back asleep.

In the morning I told my sister and our husband what had happened. They both exchanged a knowing look and said... Yeah. We've heard things coming from that closet too. A lot. I do not personally believe in ghosts, demons or supernatural. For all things must have. have logical explanations. However, I do enjoy an interesting tale. Over the years, I've experienced

a few unexplained events. I'll share one from my childhood for listener speculation. Perhaps someone can offer a rational explanation. This happened in 1985 in a larger city in West Virginia. A home sat atop a large hill, accessible by a long winding road that curved up to the peak. The neighbourhood had houses of various sizes with several families who had children around my age We all played together after school and on weekends And we walked a half mile to our bus stop every morning One family had two sons

Both younger than me and two daughters One a year younger and the other a year older The sister's birthdays were in the same month And the event I'm about to share happened during a birthday sleepover at their house. The evening had been fun, games, food and movie and general silliness. As the night wound down, we made makeshift beds on the floor, whispering and laughing in the dim light.

The basement where we slept was finished and fairly open, with a simple layout. The sister's bedroom was at one end. A short hallway led to a full bathroom. Beyond that was a large den area with stairs leading up to the kitchen. The laundry room was tucked under the stairs. At some point, drama ensued, as it often does among preteen girls. One of the guests, Dee, became upset over something and locked herself in the sister's bedroom.

We all took turns trying to coax her out, but she refused. Rather than fetching a parent, we came up with a plan. We decided to turn off most of the basement lights and sit quietly on the stairs, hoping Dee would think we had gone upstairs. Maybe, once she believed she was alone, she would come out. As we sat in hushed anticipation, something unexpected happened. A dark, child-sized shadow emerged from the exterior wall of the bathroom and ran across the den, straight into the space under the stairs.

At first it looked like a regular shadow, but something about it was deeply wrong. It wasn't cast on the floor of the walls. It stood upright, like a person. It was the size of a five- or six-year-old child. It moved like a child with a quick, bouncy run. Its hair even seemed to shift and sway as it ran. Most unsettling of all, I could see the carpet. and furniture through it.

There was no one else in the basement except Dee, who was still locked in the bedroom. She had long hair, unlike the shadow, which appeared to have short hair. We all saw it, we all screamed, and we bolted up the stairs to find the girl's mother. Their mother came down, turned on all the lights, and searched the basement. The laundry room was closed and empty. The den was empty. The bathroom was empty. The bedroom door was still locked

until Dee finally opened it for their mum. Nothing was there. In hindsight we should have just gotten an adult in the first place, but you know, kid logic. I was too shaken to stay the rest of the night and asked to go home. My nine-year-old brain simply couldn't process what I had seen. A shadow with no person. A shape with no light source.

A figure that moved like a... child but was completely translucent. Over the next year I played at their house during the daytime and never saw anything like it again. The other neighbourhood kids as well as the sisters, all agreed on what we had seen. Yet none of us could explain it. As far as I know, the family never reported any strange occurrences, but I wouldn't know for sure. My family moved in 1986. Even nearly 40 years later, I still have no explanation for the same.

what I saw. New Orleans is a city steeped in history, and with that history comes the supernatural. The homes I grew up in, built between the 1800s and early 1900s, had their fair share of ghostly activity. These are some of my experiences. My first major experiences with the paranormal happened in the house my parents bought after Hurricane Katrina. I don't know much about its history, who owned it before or what happened inside, but I do know that at least three entities occupied the triplex. The most common one seemed like a memory, replaying itself night after night. Almost every evening down the long hallway, I would hear the sound of a small bouncy ball. It would start at one end of the hall and bounce into it lost momentum,

always stopping right in front of my door. One night fed up, I swung my door open to catch my brothers in the act, assuming they were throwing a ball, but no one was there. The sound continued anyway. This became so common that I eventually got used to it, though I sometimes even heard the bouncing while walking down the hallway. The second entity was an older woman who appeared to two of my family members. My cousin, who lived in the larger side of the house for a while,

once woke up from a nap to find an elderly woman hovering over her, watching her sleep. My old brother had a similar experience. He walked into a room and saw the woman standing there. She took a few steps towards him before fading away. She was seen often, especially near the upstairs window, where multiple people spotted her looking out. The third spirit was different, angry. He was always stomping up the stairs loud enough to be heard no matter which room you were in.

Even if you stood at the landing looking down at the staircase, you could still hear the stumps coming towards you. That was my only experience with him, but my younger brother had a much more terrifying encounter. One night after using the bathroom past midnight, he came face to face. faced with the entity. He described it as a tall, shadowy figure with glowing red eyes that stared at him. And then it hissed. Panicked, he ran into my parents' room waking my mum. They prayed together under the covers until he eventually fell asleep.

My mum, though, stayed awake, hiding under the blankets until morning. The second house belonged to my aunt's mother and was just as haunted. if not more. It was built in one of the oldest parts of the city and while my experience there was short-lived, my cousins who stayed there for months had some terrifying encounters. My personal experience happened

while my family was outside playing. I had gone inside to use the bathroom and as I stepped out, the grand piano in the living room suddenly played a single note. Assuming it was a prank, I turned to check, only to be hit with a sudden overwhelming chill. Before I could react, I felt a hard punch to my stomach. The pain lingered for

several minutes and I had to sit down to recover. For my cousins, the house held a different kind of horror. At the end of a hallway stood a tall mirror resting on the floor. Every time she walked down that hall, she would see a shadowy figure standing behind her in the reflection. No matter how fast or slow she moved. It always matched her pace. The third house belonged to my ex's family, and my only experience there was brief but unsettling. One evening I arrived to find her and her family still out. Her grandfather, who only spoke Spanish, let me in and told me to wait in the living room. He wasn't much for conversations, so I sat on the couch looking at my phone. To my right, my ex had hung three paintings in an upside-down triangle pattern.

I wasn't paying attention to them until I heard a loud bang on the wall. When I looked up, the top left painting was swinging violently, like someone had just shoved it. The top right painting had already fallen to the floor. But the creepiest part, the bottom-middle painting wasn't falling. It was sliding straight down the wall, as if it were being guise. and then suddenly it dropped. Her grandfather returned just in time to see me standing up looking shaken. He gave me a suspicious look, probably thinking I had punched the wall.

I quickly explained what had happened, but I wasn't about to stay inside any longer. I waited outside until her family got home and told them what I had seen. By that point I had lived with hauntings for so long that I wasn't terrified, but I also had no interest in dealing with another one. It's been years since these experiences and my parents have since moved to a city an hour away, so no more hauntings for me. But growing up in New Orleans, a city with so much history and energy, it's almost impossible not to have a few ghost stories of your own.

I was born and raised in the southern United States, an area referred to as the low country, a coastal southern state that actually sits hundreds of miles below sea level, hence the nickname. My home state exists in a theological paradox. The city I live in is the second most haunted city in the United States, although I couldn't tell you how they measured ghosts per capita. Our haunted status makes sense when you consider the history this part of the country is seen. The American Revolutionary War, the Civil War,

countless skirmages with the indigenous native population, and an untold amount of souls enslaved and dragged from Africa to work until they died, considered more like livestock than human. We also happened to be cinched tightly by the Bible Belt, so called because we belong to a religion where religious beliefs are a cornerstone of our culture and are deeply embedded in the people here. Like everyone else, every activity I was exposed to for the first two decades of my life involved the church. nursery, school, social activities, even my first kiss.

We had sneaked away from the Wednesday teen worship service and hid in a darkened Sunday school room a few doors down. All of that to say that I knew what the afterlife was. It was a short hallway with two doors at the end. You were judged for the sins you committed on earth and were sent into either one door or the other with no room for deviating. That is, until I moved into the house on Village Green.

I am the middle of three sisters, and when I was about 14, my mum, younger sister, and I all moved into the Village Green House. From day one, that house never felt empty. Like none of us were ever welcome there, and the real owner was going to show up at any minute and kick us out. I always felt watched. Even when I was alone there was a constant feeling that someone was just out of sight, like someone was in another room of the house. It all happened so slowly.

I almost did not notice the changes in myself, how I didn't like getting undressed in my room even with the windows covered and the door locked. I actually avoided showering because even getting undressed in the bathroom was too much. Or how I started unconsciously scanning rooms for possible threats whenever. I walked in, was always aware of every environment I was in, and could never fully relax even when watching TV or reading. I would be compelled to get up and check the front and back doors multiple times at night to ensure they were locked. Eventually, my sister and I even started seeing movement, always out of the corner of our eyes, balls of light or shadows that would follow us, from room to room, like someone who was sneaking around behind.

us and try not to be seen. The constant stress and anxiety started causing physical symptoms that I still struggle with to this day. My heart would race constantly. I started experiencing terrible headaches, heartburn, prolonged fatigue and nightly insomnia. It was during an episode of insomnia when I finally realized that I did have a very real reason to be afraid of the dark. My mum always kept the hall bathroom light on and it would spill into my room via the gap in the doorframe around the door. And when I had trouble sleeping, I would trace it with my eyes around and around and around until I fell asleep. One night, as usual, I was laying in my bed tracing the soft yellow light with my eyes half open.

When all of a sudden I realised that I couldn't see the light anymore. And before I could even begin to rationalise it, I became aware of a new, far more frightening sensation. Someone was standing next to my bedside, inches from my face. Once I realised what I was looking at, two very distinctive thoughts hit me at once. The first one being that this wasn't a shadow. Whatever was now in front of me had mass and substance. and two, whoever it was stood between me and my door, between me and the safety of the hall light,

between me and my mum, I was trapped. And it was that second realisation that filled me a kind of fear that I have never experienced before or after. My heart pounded and my extremities went cold. I don't know how long I was laying there, my joints aching from the adrenaline coursing through me. but I knew I couldn't stay there. It took even longer for me to finally convince my body to move,

and slowly, so slowly, I started to turn my head to look up at the figure looming over me. But the second I started to move, a sound like a hand brushing across my face whooshed past my ear, and my nerve broke. Throwing my head under the cover I laid still and cried silently, until I finally fell asleep, praying and reciting every Bible verse I could think of.

We lived in that house for about another year before we finally left. We all have more experiences while living there, and I have never been happier to have to pick up and move in my life. I still struggle with the aftermath of my time in that house, and I think part of me will always look over my shoulder and keep extra lights on. I have since deconstructed my faith, leaving the Baptist Church and work daily to untangle my personality from the Bible stories I was raised on. I also no longer believe the afterlife is as straightforward as I used to. I guess the hallway isn't so short.

It's long and winding. And in that long hallway after death, there are dark alcoves, where those who may not be ready to face their eternal judgment, can hide themselves in. Maybe village green is just such a place. This experience occurred in 2004 when I was eight years old in North England, in a small town. At the time I had a friend the same age who I was visiting after school. From her house we went on a walk up the country lane. She lived in a very old house by the estuary.

And next to the house was an old pub that had been boarded up and abandoned. It was quite sad as the spot had once been a lively centre of the community. My parents even met each other in the pub when it was open. Me and my friend were walking back towards the house, passing the car park of the old pub. We were both excited to see a dog standing in the car park. Both being animal lovers we approached to say hello to the dog, which was incredibly big and very dark black. The dog's owner appeared to be standing far away, looking out to the river, and the dog was off the lead looking towards us.

As we got closer, however, the animal seemed very off. They were so still, the tail was out straight, like when a dog spot something interesting, no noise of breaths, no movement whatsoever. It was like looking at a still image, a photograph. but three-dimensional as if time had just been paused. The dog was probably the size of a Great Dane, so very big and tall, with huge paws that reminded me of a lion. Its appearance most closely resembled an English ball mastiff. The smooth velvet-like fur was so black that no light seemed to reflect off it,

like those videos of the special paint Vantablack that absorbs light. There was just enough light that I could still see some of its features. If that wasn't weird enough, it had orange-red eyes, that emitted a soft glow. There was no pupil, but we were close enough to see the eyeballs illuminated from the back of the head. I even saw a vein in the eye. We were probably only a metre away from it. We stood there for only a few seconds, enough that I could remember all these details. When my friends stepped back slightly, the dog started to dissipate into nothing.

The way it faded away looks like when you turn up the exposure on a photograph, so high that all the details wash away. It began at the dog's feet, then the body, and finally the two red eyes lingered in the air for some time, and then just nothing at all. Me and my friends stood in shock for a while and then looked around to confirm the dog hadn't run away, even though we both didn't see that. It was just so weird to comprehend. The person we saw stood by the river, who I assumed was the dog walker, was nowhere to be seen either. We had planned to go on the riverbank that evening, but now we excitedly went inside the friend's home to tell her mum about the experience.

strangely, throughout the whole incident, we were never scared. It should have been frightening, but we didn't feel any sense of danger or bad vibes at all. Once we told my friend's mum, she surprisingly believed us, and said she had seen what she called the ghost dog in the pub when it was open, and seen the apparition stood in their garden. She then explained that the whole area in her opinion was very, very haunted. And the whole family and locals had lots of strange experiences. I even later had another spooky experience in that friend's house. But that is another long story. And that time,

it was very frightening, so much so that I don't really like to speak about it in great detail. After that thing happened, I never went back to my friend's house and we eventually drifted apart. As an adult, I've done some research into the history of the area, and legends of the Black Shuck, a ghostly dog of folklore. The dog is mostly told as a bad omen and a bringer of harm in these stories. However, I did find some accounts that suggest otherwise. This dog wasn't bad. I would have reached out and touched it if it had been there long enough. I like to think, like in some legends, the dog is a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of.

protective spirit. Perhaps it was distracting us from going to the riverbank where the tides are quick to turn, as well as having deadly sinking mud. I'm happy to have experienced this magical encounter, even if a rational explanation can be given. Hello, I saw the video you did on Hoya Bachu and I thought I'd share my stories with you. During the pandemic, my friends and I used to camp there, since it was quite remote and we didn't want any trouble. I have to say that at the time we never ventured deep into the forest, just stayed near the entrance to keep it safe. Three years later, some of us wanted to go back to relive old memories.

We parked our cars about 100 metres from the forest right across from it. For the most part, it was a peaceful night. But around 2 a.m., we heard a scream, like never before. It didn't sound like a fox. I was used to the foxes in that area, and they don't sound like that. The scream lasted about five seconds,

but it was so loud that we all froze. Then all the dogs in the area started barking like crazy. A few moments later, the scream came again, but this time it was more distant. It had a very high-pitched tone, almost like someone in pain. To this day, I still don't know what could have made such a loud, unsettling sound that disturbed all the dogs in the area. This happened in an area towards the back part of the forest.

We got scared and decided to go home right after. I really didn't want to find out what was there. For maybe half a year, I didn't have the courage to go back, but for the sake of mystery, and to be on this the adrenaline, my friends and I decided to return. I don't remember exactly what time we arrived, but it was before midnight. It was quiet. Nothing happened. Then the group decided, let's go into the forest.

We followed what looked like a forest path for about 15 minutes before deciding to venture off the trail into a valley. We took a break and sat down on some chopped trees. The weather was perfect. no wind, no movement, nothing. We sat there talking for about ten minutes, just enjoying ourselves. Then we heard a cracking noise. Suddenly a huge branch fell. Keep in mind there was no wind, nothing.

The tree was tall, maybe 20 metres, and the branches were solid. When we looked up, we could see exactly where it had broken off. The part of the branch that remained intact kept swinging. up and down, like someone was moving it. At that moment we decided to leave, we got scared. After we made it back to our cars, we stood around talking about what had happened and what could have caused it. Then, in the distance, I heard something, like a woman's voice singing a slow, mellow song. I couldn't make out the lyrics, but one thing I know for sure.

It came from the forest. Somewhere far away. In Romanian folklore, there are witches called Lely. They are women who perform dark rituals, and from what I've heard from elders, they lure men to them. Honestly, hearing that voice, somewhere deep in the forest,

fit the description perfectly. Especially since it's well known that rituals are performed in Huibatu. This happened about, a year ago. We still visit Hoyer from time to time but after that night we haven't really encountered anything else. My name is Roel, I'm 21 and I grew up in Cluj. I will always find that place intriguing and for the sake of mystery I'll continue to visit from time to time. I don't know how I can keep calling myself a staunched skeptic but I am. I can't help it. It's in my very

DNA, this ability to rationalise. Ridiculous, seeing as how I've had not one but multiple brushes with a paranormal. Tonight, I'll tell you about two. I'll tell you the tamer one first. It's also the shortest, so I'd rather we got it out the way before the big, truly horrific one. I guess the moral of this first story is that ghostly encounters are often so rooted in the mundane that you don't even know there happening until it's pointed out to you. Or maybe that's just me. I'm South African and for a short while between the years of 2009 and early 2011, I attended an all-girls private school. Despite life there being hell for me, nothing prepared me for what I ran into during my piano practice one morning. I'd had a free period and decided to spend it on my exam work in one of the

music rooms. Our music program required eight hours of documented practical work a day, and I was yet to master my Baroque piece. I entered the room with my favourite piano, shutting the door behind me and throwing home the deadbolt to indicate the room was occupied to anyone else needing a space. Helps not to be interrupted, you understand. This became moot, however, when I looked up to find I had a co-occupant, a girl about my age wearing a plain yellow dress. Almost all schools in South Africa require uniforms. Her dress was a striking difference to my violet floral one. She was sat in the wind sill, her hair down, which was also against the dress code, and she was staring out the window. Gingerly, I approached her to ask her whether or not

I could perhaps use the piano in this room, or if she was planning to use it. You see, my school's music program was the best in our town, and many kids from other schools came to do their music with us. However, my question, my presence, when Tan acknowledged, she made no move at all. I may as well have been talking to the wall. At this stage, I assumed she was wearing earbuds and I couldn't see them through her cascade of flagrant red hair. I sat down to practice. Finally, the bell rang, signalling my next class and I got up to leave. This, at least, seemed to grab my silent companion's notice, and she moved as if she too had some place to be.

Again, I'd try to engage with her, to thank her for letting me borrow her space. She may have been facing me now, but her eyes did not come up to meet mine. Now, I've never been a proponent for eye contact, finding it far too distracting and invasive, but I genuinely believed she just couldn't hear me, so I manoeuvred to catch her gaze. I had barely a moment to take in her intense green eyes and smattering a freckles,

before she, appearing quite startled, vanished into thin air. I'd like to report that I took it in stride, as a self-proclaimed horror connoisseur, but every hair on my body stood straight up and my blood turned to ice in my veins. I got out of that room so fast I practically ran through my music teacher who was coming in to take a different student. Once upstairs and seated in my French period,

my usually ignored presence was noted when one of the other girls asked me why I looked sick. Losing my mind, I guess, I decided I had to confide in someone, I told the girl everything, sparing no detail or observation. To my great confusion, she frowned. You haven't seen her before? The girl asked earnestly.

I'm aware you all think I'm weird as shit, but even I don't go about making friends with the dead, I retorted. First of all, she responded, we don't think it. You are weird as shit, and you scare most people. Second of all, you just saw the yellow lady. The who? I responded. This is when I learned of our school's ghost story. Apparently it had been a lady's finishing school at its inception.

A mother and her two children, a teenage girl and her much younger brother, had come to live on campus in exchange for keeping the school clean and tidy. Now there was always this one staircase us kids were never allowed to use. called the big staircase, because I expect Grand seemed a tad cliche to them or whatever. The staircase had been installed during the mother and her child's tenure. One day the teenage daughter, in her yellow maid's dress, had been sweeping near there. She tripped, tumbled right down the stairs and broken her neck, dying on impact. My mistaking her for a student from a neighbouring school

had been because said school also had yellow dresses of the same cut and style as our school dresses and the yellow lady, as she was known, wore a maid's dress that bore a striking resemblance to that other school's uniform. After all of this had been made plain to me, I'd realised I had seen this girl before all over school amongst my fellow students. As I said though, having students from neighbouring high schools

Our campus was far from uncommon We offered subjects the other schools didn't But were allowed to come take at ours I guess I just thought she was one of them All this to say It was maybe a week or so after the encounter That I was on my way back down to the music block for a lesson Before reaching the relevant staircase

That would lead me straight there However I could hear the sounds of sweeping and humming, a pretty voice and a rhythmic whoosh on the worn and warm wooden flooring. It's necessary to point out that this was right by the big staircase, which is not the one I would be taking. As I approached, I expected to see one of the school's cleaners, but even when I was surrounded by the sounds, I saw no one. Taking a chance and internally calling myself insane, I out loud said, Thank you for letting me borrow your music room the other day.

The humming and sweeping stopped instantly, the corridor becoming silent as a grave. Then, in barely a whisper, I swore I heard a delicate little voice say. Yes, Miss. Needless to say, I nearly fell down the stairs in my haste to get away. Many other stories surround the yellow lady haunting, and I would be happy to share some. at a later date if you would like. For now, let's move on to the big one. In 2019, I took my first official job as a high school English teacher.

An easy Google search will reveal where, as it's known as the most haunted city in South Africa. I was 24 at the time and excited to get out and be a real adult for the first time in my life. A few context clues before we get started on the story. The most affordable accommodation I could find was a suite in the women's dormitory of a school for children with severe special needs. This was not the school I taught at. The school I taught at was a small, severely fundamentalist Christian public school that frequently had to rely on the law to manage the disciplinary infractions of its students.

It quite quickly became clear to me that no one there was at all interested in helping me, or even listening to what I had to say. This included my unwitting roommate. Despite the following account, I remain a healthy sceptic to this day, more likely to look for a logical explanation to odd occurrences, then immediately jumping to the supernatural. This story simply cannot be explained by anything logical that I found. The first thing I noticed was the heat.

Now this city is in one of the hottest places, in the country. But somehow it was always five to ten degrees hotter in my suite at all times. This made sleep and existence in this room practically impossible. But as a young teacher with a barely livable salary, I had no other choice. More exhausting still, however, was one of the other talents. An older woman who, for reasons I may never understand, faulted her duty to convert me. At this point, I had finally found.

begun to shake off officially the oak of Calvinistic Christianity under which I've been raised. Out from under my blindly believing family, I was finally free to make up my own mind, and all my introspection led me to one clear conclusion. I cannot subscribe to something as illogical, flawed and dangerous as organised religion. That stuff's more addictive than crack, and just as hard to get clean from. My point being this woman seemed to smell this on me and would begin actively waiting for me in places she knew I'd be to spread the good word.

It took me being cruel beyond my means to get her to back off finally. But I'm getting ahead of myself. After the heat, it was my front door. You see, this school and its facilities were severely underfunded. This means that maintenance on the building was practically non-existent. You needed something to... placed or fixed, forget about it. You simply no longer have access to that thing. One such maintenance issue was the latching on the doors. They simply wouldn't. The only way of keeping the door

shut was to lock them. So I fell into the habit of doing this quite quickly. Not a little in part because God's most devoted at zero compunction about banging my door open to come and visit. And through her nonsense, the unbearable heat in my room, and my constant exhaustion and dehydration. I needed to get at least some work done for my students. This all became moot though, when my door would still sometimes just swing open. I would make a point of locking it and leaving my key in the lock to make sure it couldn't be unlocked from the other side, and it would simply still open by itself. unlocked and without the handle turning.

Never when I tugged on it or checked the integrity of the lock, but by itself, at odd intervals, especially at night. When it really began to get insane for me was when things started going wrong at school as well. I had an incident in my classroom involving one student trying to beat another with a brick, trust and dismay at the fact that this is quite commonplace in most schools here and I unthinkingly stepped between them to attempt to de-escalate the situation not only did I get one of my legs bashed up pretty badly but the principal gave me a disciplinary for stepping in

instead of calling the school disciplinarian I'll just let the kids beat each other to bloody pulps with masonry in future shall I while I run around looking for some joke of an authority that's barely ever where he's easily locatable. I, aye, I, captain. That same day, I noticed the first cross, well, a crucifix, drawn upside down on the wall above my bed.

This is where I should make a few admissions, dear listeners. The main reason for my scepticism isn't because I'm some big proponent for logical thinking above all else, or because I have some deep understanding of the machinations of the world. I used to be a severely sick person. Before my ADHD and autism were diagnosed, my panic disorder frequently got the better of me and made me highly irrational. It got bad enough that I developed psychosis,

and hallucinations were not beyond the scope of my brain's attempts to alleviate the incessant onslaught of anxiety I had to deal with every second of every day. this reason it was much easier for me to believe in my own insanity than anything tangibly odd or outside the ordinary. I couldn't even bring myself to completely rule out, my door randomly opening, being a dysfunction of my thoughtfulness, despite triple checking it every time I locked it. So when the first upside-down crucifix appeared, I was more than comfortable, chalking it up to a stressed in due psychosis, and leaving it at that.

I just wish that's where it stopped, but alas. On another day, after the third crucifix had appeared, this one painstakingly scratched into the anti-glare film on my sweet solitary window. My school received a call in which I was accused of being an incorrigible devil-worshipper, with an utter disdain for God, and all he stood for. logic right I don't believe in Christianity so I must worship the devil like mr Lucifer isn't the Christian villain why would I believe in the villain if the entire story doesn't strike my fancy anyway it was my neighbor miss head of the Jesus fandom

rebutting after I told her I was crazy enough without needing to add hearing another voice in my head to the mix God can take a long walk off a short peer like I mentioned earlier, cruelty beyond my means. I've never had anything against religion as a concept. My family are all staunch believers and find great comfort in going to church and reading their Bibles. I support them 100% and will gladly go to church with them when they ask. I just don't believe it myself, but by this point I'd really gotten sick of this woman on top of everything else. I was, in fact, starting to entertain the notion that all the weird stuff happening to me was her. She seemed a type.

She was highly irrational on a good day and actively sat waiting for me for hours outside my suite, just to give me another sermon on why her faith was the one universal truth. I was considering filing a restraining order. That is, until my stuff started disappearing and reappearing in different places. instantly. First it was the water bottles. Like I said, I lived in a constant state of dehydration from being so hot and sweaty all the time. So I often drunk up to three litres of water a day just to keep up with all the fluid I was losing. But I put a bottle down beside my bed before immediately reaching for it again and finding nothing, only to look up and see it sitting,

four metres away on my little table. I was once less than, prepping and a binder full of model lesson plans and work sheets and such slid off my lap and onto the floor where I would hear it clatter to the linoleum only for me to have looked down at it not a second later to find the entire thing gone even the loose sheets of paper piled on top of it that I was using for reference would have vanished into thin air glancing up to check my surroundings I found it sitting closed and with all the papers returned to their correct plastic sleeves on my nightstand. Things only escalated. There was the incident of the fire.

Along with a new job comes taking over some of the financial responsibilities your parents took on you when you were a child. One of these was my phone. At this point I couldn't afford a new phone. Instead, I was living between two old broken ones that I kept alive on a month-by-month basis. One of the things I had to watch out for was one of these phones was overheating. So since my room was already a sauna, I could only charge my phone there a little bit

to give it enough juice for the alarm to wake me the following morning. Then I would take it with me to continue charging it at school, where it was much cooler. One night I woke up to severe pain in my right hand. My eyes flew open and I sat up for start, taking in the foul-smelling blaze raging up on my rug area, which had begun to burn my hand. I'd forgotten to unplug my phone, and it burnt out so badly it caught fire.

Freaking out, I took one of my precious bottles of clean water. You cannot drink tap water in most of this country, and most people either pay for filtered water refills at grocery stores or have water filters installed in their homes, and I attempted to douse the flames. But when I turned around, the fire was gone. The smells still filled the room,

but I realised then it smelled sulphurous, not really like burning plastic or battery discharge. Plus, the phone was still burnt out, with visible scorch marks and bubbles where the casing had begun to warp from the heat. But, as it lay there in the centre of my area rug, it was the only thing damaged. My rug didn't have a mark on it. After this, sleeping in that room became impossible.

I was exhausted at work. My teaching was suffering. My department head hated me, and it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to stay at the school much longer. Calling my parents proved fruitless. They only told me to tough it out. and ask for help from management, which they wouldn't hear wasn't helping me out in the slightest. So trust me when I tell you that in my vulnerable state, I had completely given over to my mental illness. I believed I was crazy, useless, beyond help, and I was spiraling towards a very dark place indeed.

And that, friends, was when the scratching started. It was never quiet or gentle. it sounded like there was an animal in my closet, desperately trying to get out. Now something a lot of people don't talk about is how the coolness under pressure aspect of ADHD, especially untreated ADHD, can hinder just as much as it can help. When I first started hearing the scratching, I was too depleted to move to check it out. Walking from my bed to my front door winded me. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep.

I felt completely isolated and alone. I had no sanctuary anywhere. My family lived 800 kilometres away. So instead of linking this with all the other weirdness that I was battling to keep putting down to my slowly dwindling sanity, I rationalised. Maybe the gross old building had rats.

When I would open my closet door at times, recalling the scratching, I would even find definite scratch marks in the woods. but always in the part of the closet for hanging clothes, a little higher than my eye level of 1.64 metres, or 5 foot 4 for our American listeners, but never high enough to be leveled with the crossbar. Then one night after coming home from a work event,

the scratching was already going on while I let myself into my suite. Without thinking I yanked open the door, for going turning on my lights and plunged my hand into the void of darkness inside. Some kind of shadowy thing came out to meet me though, like a massive black finger with a claw for a nail and scratched my arm. Despite almost never scarring, I still had that scar to this day, even though my burn scars from the fire have since faded. As it was, I yelped and pulled my arm back, slamming the door shut. I slept with my sweet door open that night,

letting the light from the corridor spill inside. The scratching did not cease once. Finally, the day came when I tended my resignation from that school. It honestly had nothing to do with the haunting. Thinking back on it now, that was actually the tamest part of my life at that time. My brother offers to come load up my furniture the next day, and I was going home.

I felt so relieved, I can't even describe it, even now. Unfortunately, at this point, I have to share one more tip bit about this dormitory I temporarily called home. It did not have working showers or baths. All the showers poured brown sludge instead of water. In fact, the building frequently did not even have water. Another common occurrence in this third world hellhole. I was showering at the gym and feeling disgusted the rest of the time.

As this was my last night here, however, I had already cancelled my gym membership and I needed a wash pretty badly. Packing up in that sweltering cesspool of a room had left me filthy and we had received a notification text from the matron that day that one of our baths was fully functional. So I put together on my bathings, got undressed, wrapped myself in a towel and set off down the passage to the bathroom. Excited to freshen up, go to sleep and leave this place as soon as possible.

So naturally, as luck and ADHD would have it, I forgot to bring with me a plastic picture for which to wet my hair for shampoo. My dumb ass will never beat the white girl in a horror movie allegations when I, in my infinite wisdom, leaned back and slowly submerged my entire body underwater. It was instantaneous. The twin spots of pressure on my chest came on almost predictably. Opening my eyes, I could clearly see that there was no one there. I was completely alone.

And yet something was pressing down on me, keeping me underwater. I'd taken quite a big breath before going under, though. So instead of losing my mind and thrashing, that old calm in a pinch ADHD quirk kicked in. I decided to see if I could wait it out, and I could. The pressure went away a moment later. When I sat up to grab my shampoo and finish my bath, however, I found both my toiletries bag and my towel were gone, vanished, nowhere to be seen. At this point I cut my losses. I got out, shook off as much water as I could, and made a bare-ass break for it to my room.

My brother found the missing items the next day when we lifted and carried out my couch from my room. A couch, mind you that I hadn't lifted up and searched under myself the previous night when I'd scoured my room in a last ditch effort to try and find my lost things. It was as I handed over my keys to the matron and she asked how my stay had been, but I first felt free enough to discuss my ordeal. Something in a tone gave me pause, and some small part of me still held out hope that I wasn't destined for a grippy sock vacay in a pillow room. Did the previous occupant of that room report anything strange?

I asked her as my brother honked his horn impatiently for us to go. It was fair we had quite a journey ahead of us. I wouldn't know, the matron answered, not unkindly. It was before my time. I frowned. How long have you been here? Fifteen years, she answered, with a hint of pride. But then her expression changed as though a switch had been flipped.

Let me ask you this, though. Did the crosses show up? Suddenly, despite it being 42 degrees Celsius, again about 108 Fahrenheit out, I felt ice cold. Crosses? She nodded. slowly, pensively.

When I was new, the previous tenant of your room had just left, the matron before me had been sharing me around, and we found the door to your room ajar. Now the old woman was formidable as they come, which she'd need to be in our line of work, but even she wouldn't set foot inside that place. She said there was something dark in there, something inhuman,

from where we stood we watched as a crudely drawn upside-down crucifix slowly faded from the one wall. It was then that I recalled not seeing as many of the crosses over the last few days, as though whatever presence I've been sharing my space with had known I was leaving. Over the course of my three-month stay, there had been about eight crosses in various places throughout the room. Some looked like they had been drawn with fatty, dirty fingers on the wall, while others, like the one on my window and on my closet door, had been scratched into each surface. Now I wouldn't know how to explain any of that to my brother,

so I've been quite worried about him coming to help me move. But as the matron told her story, I realised, I didn't recall seeing the crucifix on my closet door, or the one above my room's light switch at any point. during my brother and I as comings and goings from the room for the move. I hadn't answered her about the crosses. Couldn't bring myself even to mention any of my ordeal now that I was so close to freedom, but I did mention how it'd probably be a good idea not to let people live in that suite anymore.

She'd only nodded sagely before wishing me luck for the future. As we put the city in the rearview mirror, it was like coming out of a long illness. I could suddenly breathe again, and the world had colour and life. I still don't know what that thing was. A demon? An elaborate, persistent hallucination? The supernatural or just a severe bout of mental illness? You be the judge.

All I do know, though, is I've never experienced anything like that before, and nothing nearly as otherworldly since. Thank you for this accepting community you've created. I hope these stories at the very least entertain, if they cannot be believed. I guess I know they happened. And that's good enough for me.