Transcription
What is the most downright creepy or unexplainable thing that you've ever experienced?
I live in the north of Switzerland. We have a lot of old military bunkers from the Second World War. When I was 7 or 8 years old, three friends and I went out to explore one of these bunkers that was built on a hill inside a small forest. The main door was jammed, so we had to break it open. We found a big log nearby and used it as a battering ram. After many tries, the door wouldn't budge, but there was a peepphole. It was about 10 cm (4 in) in diameter. We opened it and shown a light inside. There was a long, ruined, and dark hallway with rooms on the left and right sides. We couldn't see the end of the hallway. It was just too long. Every one of us wanted to catch a glimpse of the inside when one of my friends said, "There is a small light at the end of the hallway." This light wasn't there when I had looked through the peepphole. So, I pushed him away and took a second look. What I saw sent a shiver down my spine. It wasn't a small light. It looked more like a flashlight pointed directly at me, and behind it was the silhouette of a person. I walked a few steps back and said, "There is someone in there." At the same moment, someone or something knocked on the door from the inside of the bunker. This was the moment we panicked, started screaming, and ran away. I was so scared, I ran straight home, and locked the door. The next day at school, my friends and I talked about the event. We came to the conclusion that some older kids had probably played a prank on us. One week later, we went to the same bunker again, but when we looked, we saw that the welded seal that was supposed to keep the door locked was rusty and not broken. We just left without saying a word to each other. It was impossible that someone had opened this door before us, and this was the only entrance. I still live in the same region. But since then, I have never visited the bunker again.
I have two stories. When my son was about 6 months old, I had a dream that I was at my grandparents house with him. My grandfather was holding my son and crying while I talked to my grandmother. I told her that I wished she and my grandfather were still alive to see my son and she said, "Don't worry, we see him." I didn't think anything else of it until about 5 years later when I was talking to my sister and I mentioned that I'd had a dream about our grandparents. She said, "Was Papa Joe, what we called our grandfather, holding your son while he rocked in his chair, and did grandma tell you they were watching you?" I said yes and asked how she knew. And she said, "I had the same dream when my son was 6 months old." And more recently, my son, he was 20 at the time, was driving home from work late one night. As he drove, he said he very clearly heard my mother, who had been dead for 2 years, say, "Jonathan, stop the car." Out of reflex, he did. And as soon as he stopped, three deer ran out in front of him. Had he not stopped the car, he would have hit them.
When I was in high school, a group of friends and I did an archaeological dig at a Roman fort in South Shields, UK. I had never been out of the US, so we took the train up to Edinburgh for some sightseeing. We really enjoyed ourselves until the evening when we went out for drinks. As we were walking back to our hotel, a group of two women and one man approached our group. For whatever reason, I was overcome with anxiety. As they got closer, I saw that they were three of the most beautiful and arrogant-looking people I'd ever seen. Bright blue eyes, perfect hair, and perfectly fitted all black clothing. Everyone in my group noticed. They seemed, for lack of a better term, powerful. What happened next blew my mind. They came up to us and inquired as to what we were doing. We sort of half-lied and stood there awkwardly. Someone mentioned that we were heading to London the following day. One of the women looked at us and said that we must avoid the tube and buses and that it would be best to get out of the country as soon as possible. By that point, we were all extremely creeped out, but we made it to our hotel. The following morning, we took an early flight to London and took a cab to our hotel. That was the day of the London tube bombings. 6 years later, I was visiting my girlfriend who was getting her master's degree at the University of Edinburgh. We were at a pub and I saw the woman and the man who had talked to me half a decade ago. She approached me and said that I was right to have taken her advice, even though I look completely different now. It was the single most spine- chilling event of my life, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.
My mom had a seizure in her sleep. She was epileptic, got wrapped up in her blankets, and suffocated. Paramedics were able to get her breathing again and loaded her into an ambulance. This was very early in the morning, like 4:30 a.m. I was tasked with calling family to tell them my mother was in the hospital. The first and most important phone call I had to make was to my grandmother, her mother. Before I had a chance to grab the phone and call, the phone rang. It was my grandmother calling. This would have been about 5:30 a.m. my time, but about 2:30 a.m. in her time zone. She wanted to tell us that she'd seen my mother bathed in golden light. She claimed they had talked and that my mother was dead, but headed to a better place now. At this point, I didn't know my mother was going to die. My father was at the hospital with her and didn't know she was going to die yet. The doctors didn't know she was brain dead yet, but somehow my grandmother knew and contacted me. Incredibly spooky.
I moved into my current home around 3 years ago. There's no real creepiness to this story, but it's very much unexplained. We live about 100 yards from the local church, which has a bell tower. Every year in winter, it's happening currently. The church bells chime for 6:00 p.m. Six single chimes. There is a smell that takes over my home for around 30 seconds. I can't describe this smell. It's a mixture of sweet and sour, dark and cold, wet and dry. It's just not a smell I can put my finger on. I mentioned winter because the only pattern I can see is that this only occurs when it's dark at 6:00 p.m., only really in winter. My girlfriend and I have lived here a fair while and are very much used to this, as is the dog. Now, we did a lot of research on the house, but couldn't find anything of interest. We spoke to our landlord who said he'd never noticed anything, although he's never actually lived in the house. We let it drop when we couldn't find anything out. It became part of our daily routine. About four months ago, our neighbor unfortunately passed away. He was a quiet man who never really spoke other than to be polite. "Good morning, how are you?" etc. His daughter was clearing out his house a little while later, and I got to chatting with her. She explained that the past tenant in my house was a widower, the same as her father. He lived away with his son in the summer, but would spend winters at home. Every day at 6:00 p.m. when the church bell rang, the two of them would cook dinner together. Apparently, they were a bit crazy with their recipes and ended up making all sorts of concoctions. Apparently, you could smell them cooking from up the street. It's not really creepy, but it's certainly inexplicable.
My grandmother had a giant window in her family room that looked out on the backyard. It was a good-sized yard that backed up to fields and a wooded area. The deer would make daily trips to her yard to hit the provided salt lick and steal pears off the trees. My grandmother would sit in her chair and watch the deer, and it wasn't uncommon to visit her and not see several deer walking through the yard. So, grandmother got very old, like grandmothers do, and developed a cancer that couldn't be treated. She went from her chair to lying on the couch, still able to enjoy the deer outside. Eventually, the decision was made to move her to hospice. My father, uncle, and sister were there that day. I lived several states away, though I had traveled to say my goodbye not long before. It was obviously a very emotional process to take someone from their home of 60 years for the last time. As they were doing a final trip through the house, they went through the family room and saw 15 to 20 deer in the backyard. The deer were all sitting and all looking at the house. Normally, they just wander around for a few minutes and move on. But they were all sitting there and stayed that way while my family stared back. My father, uncle, and sister all swear by the story. Maybe it was a weird weather day or the deer had a meetup scheduled that day anyway, but I like to think that they came to say goodbye to a longtime friend.
I was living in an older apartment with two roommates. It was a three-story apartment with an attic loft, an upstairs with the bedrooms, and the main level. The lease was for a year. For the first 8 months, the only strange thing that would happen was the fridge door would be left open at times. With an old fridge, uneven floors, and a roommate who was used to having his mother clean up after him, we didn't think too much of it. Everything started getting weird the moment we put in our notice that we were not going to renew our lease. It started out with the fridge door being open more often. We started to duct tape it shut. My girlfriend, now wife, was over one night and we decided to stay in and watch movies. I threw a load of laundry in the washer and turned it on. After the movie finished, I realized that the timer didn't buzz, so I went to check on my clothes. The washer door was open and the washer was full of water. My girlfriend didn't move from the couch during the whole movie, but I still had to ask her if she'd put anything in the washer. It was a topload washer, so someone would have had to lift it up. Then the night terrors started happening. I have never had any night terrors before, nor have I had them since. It was always the same dream. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and see a dark figure standing in my doorway. I'd stare at it for a while before it rushed at me and started to shake me. Most of the time, it happened when my girlfriend slept over, and I would wake her up. She would say I looked terrified and was screaming, but nothing came out. The worst one was the day I was working the afternoon shift. I woke up at 9:00 a.m. because my roommate was screaming my name from downstairs. I yelled back, "What do you want? I am trying to sleep." She just kept on yelling my name. I was pissed and went downstairs to an empty kitchen. Then I heard her call my name from the attic. I was scared at this point, so I went back up to my bedroom and called her at work. She picked up. I told her what happened. I got dressed, got the hell out of the apartment, and walked around uptown for the rest of the day. I moved out before the lease was up, as I had bought a house. Two weeks before the lease was up, one of my roommates showed up at my house, clearly rattled. He told me he was at the apartment alone and he heard someone run down the stairs from the attic, run down the other set of stairs, and out the front door. He ran downstairs and froze when he saw the front door was closed and the deadbolt was locked from the inside. That was the last time he stayed there. Nothing really happened to my other roommate. She stayed there by herself for the last 2 weeks before moving out. She got the feeling that she was not alone at times, but that was it.
Years ago, I fell asleep on my mother's living room sofa. She was already in bed, but my brother was out somewhere. Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up to see someone standing over me and covering me with a blanket. It looked like a man wearing a bandana. I assumed it was my brother, but thought it was strange for him to be wearing that. The next morning, I asked him about it, and he said he didn't even come into the living room when he came home, and it wasn't him who covered me up. My mother also denied doing it, and no one else was in the house that night. I didn't really find that creepy until a while later when one of my aunts stayed at my mom's house and reported the exact same thing had happened to her. Apparently, there was a ghost in that house that wanted to make sure people were tucked in when they fell asleep on the sofa. Could be worse.
When I was really young, around 1 to 3 years old, I was always sick and quiet. My parents moved us from Alaska to Oregon so they could be closer to family to help raise me. We moved around a few times, renting crappy old houses. There was one house we lived in in particular that was old, creaky, the works. It even had an insane landlord, literally insane. She went to the hospital for psychotic and schizophrenic episodes and her husband was trying to keep himself together while taking care of her and managing the rental houses. What I'm saying is that it was not a happy place. My parents could feel it. My grandparents could feel it and I could too. I told my parents there were skeletons in my closet watching me. When my grandma was alone with me, I told her, "Man with a gun." And that's all I said. We were close to the city, so it would not have been normal to see a man with a gun around the house. I kept saying small things like that the entire time we were in that house. I never said anything about monsters, skeletons, or ghosts before or after that house. The weirdest part happened about a month before we moved out. Someone broke into our house but didn't steal or touch anything. There was human waste smeared in weird patterns on the walls and around the house. Needless to say, we got the heck out of there and moved to a different house.
I have a couple of stories about the next house. One was the most terrifying thing that has happened to me and the other was a mix of scary and happy. The most terrifying moment. I was 6 or seven when it happened and it scared me so badly so I can remember it very well. I was just starting to wake up from a night's sleep, gaining my senses slowly. I was lying on my bed facing the door. I saw the door open and a large man walk in who I assumed to be my dad. I remember a pressure on my legs that felt like hands and they were shaking me lightly as if trying to wake me up. But I decided to be a little brat that morning and pretended I was still completely asleep. After a moment, the shaking stopped. Then I felt a small breeze under my blanket as if someone was lifting the blankets by my feet. Right as I felt the chill, two large hands grabbed both of my legs really hard. They started pulling me off the end of the bed as if trying to drag me underneath. This whole time I thought it was my dad messing with me or just trying to wake me up. But the moment I felt those hands on me, trying to pull me off the bed, I was terrified. I had never been scared of my dad. So, what was going on? Why did these hands feel so angry? I was clawing at my bed to get a grip on something to pull myself away from the hands. At some point, after I had resisted for 30 to 60 seconds, they just let go. I ran out of my room as soon as I was free. I ran to the kitchen and saw both of my parents standing there making breakfast. I was crying and confused and even though my dad was standing in the kitchen, I asked him in between sobs something along the lines of, "Dad, why did you do that? You scared me." He just looked at me flabbergasted and said, "I haven't been in your room to wake you up yet." I think that was the most confused and scared I've ever been in my life.
The last story I have is actually not so bad and is kind of comforting. My little brother was born four years after me, and we had already moved into the house that we still live in in Oregon. My parents bought it from this sweet old widow, who we will call Trudy, just for the sake of the story. This old woman was lonely with no family close by, a dead husband, and only cats for companions. She took a liking to my then young parents, and did everything she could to ward off other buyers, and worked with my parents to make sure they got the house. She was lonely and trying to help a young couple with a small child. So, we lived there for a couple of years with my parents still keeping in contact with Trudy. After 2 years or so, Trudy passed away. Now, my little brother had never met Trudy and he was 2 or three when this happened. I remember him running out of his room after he had been put to bed to the living room very excited, saying to my parents that he had visited Grandma Trudy and that she said hi.
Four years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night. We had a two-month-old newborn sleeping in the room next door. I had a video monitor on my bedside table, so my wife and I could easily check on him. So, I pressed the button to turn on the screen, and what I saw scared me like nothing ever had before. My baby boy was gone. Now, I know that instinct should have made me run right into the baby's room. Instead, I froze. I looked over and my wife was sleeping next to me. Finally, I moved, but not to run into the other room, as I should have. Instead, I turned up the volume on the baby monitor. I heard another woman's voice singing a lullaby. I'm not kidding. Another woman was singing to my baby in a very soft, gentle, and melodic voice. I don't remember what song it was, something like, "Go to sleep, little baby." Finally, my freeze broke. I jumped up, ran through the hallway, and burst into my boy's room. He was sound asleep in his crib. No woman, no singing. Turns out the monitor was picking up my next door neighbor's monitor. They had just bought a video monitor for their own newborn on our recommendation. Nothing supernatural here, but I don't know if I've ever experienced anything scarier.
I'm sure people have had creepier experiences than me, but I will share mine anyway. It was in my father's old house. This house was huge. It had five bedrooms and was on quite a lot of land. It was a very secluded house. It couldn't be seen from the road or a nearby park and was surrounded by bushland. Note that it was winter, so there were no windows open and we didn't have any heaters in the house. It was probably around 10:00 p.m. I was the last one awake and decided I wanted to call it a day. I did the usual routine before bed and laid down to go to sleep. I was lying there for probably 10 minutes when I could feel some kind of pressure on the bottom of my bed. I thought that maybe I was just entering a sleep stage, so I thought nothing of it. Then the pressure started moving around my legs, not on them, but all around and between them. I freaked out and did what any normal person would do. I froze and hoped it would go away. After probably five more minutes of just pressure on my legs, it lifted. I remember my heart beating so fast, and I sat up in bed to move and try to shake off the adrenaline when I felt a hand press against my face and a massive gust of air blow my hair back. I totally freaked out and slept on my dad's floor that night. We moved soon after because my stepmother started to have weird experiences, too. I'm not saying it was paranormal. It was just something that I couldn't and still can't understand or explain.
I'm going to preface this by saying I went to boarding school for 6 years. This boarding school was in the middle of a one-stoplight town and on a hill 800 ft up. The school used to be an old monastery. It was hundreds of years old and huge with four stories, including a basement that had a boiler room and long hallways. Not all of these stories happened to me, but the people who told them to me were reliable enough to believe. Also, the school didn't want us telling stories to other people because they were afraid that it would make them not want to go to the school due to it being haunted.
The first one happened to me. I used to be in charge of cleaning the gymnasium at night. Every student had a job that they had to do either at night or in the morning to help take care of the school. It taught you some practical things and all. Anyway, I was there by myself that night getting ready to start sweeping the gym. The gym had two floors. The upstairs part was the weightlifting area and you could see it fully from the bottom part of the gym where the basketball court was. As I stepped into the gym, one of the basketballs started rolling a bit. I looked around to see if any doors were open. None were. I chocked it up to randomness, but saw that it was continuing to roll. As I watched it, it made a full circle around the entire gym and stopped right next to my feet. At this point, I was a bit scared, but figured it was nothing. I heard a creaking coming from the second floor and looked up. There was a girl there just staring right at me. As soon as I made direct eye contact with her, she bolted to the stairs that would take her to me. She let out a scream that I cannot describe. I was terrified and froze in place. Thankfully, she didn't come to me, but took a left and bolted through the main doors of the gym. They didn't open. She just went right through them. I noped right out of there.
There was a chapel that was really in the middle of the school. This is a non-religious school, so we used it for musical performances and all that sort of stuff. I was in the choir for the years that I was there, so I was very used to performing in it. There was stained glass on all of the windows and such. Every time you walked in there, it always felt as if someone was watching you. It wasn't only me. Multiple people felt that way. There was a big grand piano on the opposite side from where you walked and that was our stage. People would go in there at night and practice on it or just play for fun. Most people would just go in there and only turn on the stage lights, leaving the rest off while they were practicing. This story isn't something that I witnessed, but a friend of mine did. She was playing on the piano by herself, just having fun and practicing. While in the middle of a song, the keys next to her started going up and down as if trying to add another part to her song. She jokingly said, "Hey, stop. That doesn't go with what I am doing." She immediately felt as if someone had boxed her ears and she became really dizzy. She freaked out and bolted out of there. She came crying down to the area where all of the students hung out in their free time. She told me and a few friends the story and it took quite a while to get her to calm down. Many people have seen a girl in a white dress constantly roaming that area.
Another story was that the high school part of the school was on the highest floor of the building. One night, one of the seniors was studying late. He was working on something at about 3:00 a.m. when one of the window blinds started flickering. You know that noise blinds make when wind goes through them quickly. He thought nothing of it until it started happening on the other side of the room. This is a huge room. It fits over 200 students. He went over to the window to close it. He found that it wasn't open. He laughed and thought he must just be really tired. He went back to continue studying and a blind on the other side of the room started going, then another and another until all of them were going. There are over 30 windows on the top floor. He said he just stood there, dazed by the whole situation, until all of them just stopped at the same time. He left his stuff out and ran to his dorm room. His roommate said he looked like he had seen a ghost.
When I was in high school, I was a horrible student. One time, after my usual poor report card, my punishment was to help my dad's janitorial company by cleaning the newest account he had picked up. It just so happened to be a church. Due to the church keeping odd hours, I would usually start cleaning around 10 or 11 p.m. The first night, my dad helped me out by showing me what to do. We arrived a little early, around 8:00 p.m., so he could meet with the pastor and get the keys. During the brief meeting with the pastor, I got a majorly creepy vibe, but my dad seemed cool with it, so whatever. Cut to an hour or so later. My dad and I are cleaning separate rooms. I feel somebody watching me, so my head shoots around. To my relief, it was my dad. I noticed he was pale, and he said, "You weren't just in the other room with me, were you?" I said, "No." And he told me that he had just seen me standing there watching him. He had asked what I needed, and I didn't respond. Then he said, "I put my hand on his shoulder just as he started to say, 'I get a weird feeling from these people.'" Referring to the people of the church. He told me that just as he finished saying that, the hand on his shoulder squeezed hard enough to bring him to his knees. He turned and nobody was there. So that probably should have been enough to make us stop cleaning the church, but we had a job to do, so we did it. I started cleaning the church weekly and nothing else happened. One week, since I had just turned 18, my buddy wanted to take me to the strip club. So, he agreed to help me clean if it would speed things up. At one point, he took the trash out to the back alley and I suddenly heard him running back and screaming, "What? Where are you?" I ran out to see what was going on and asked what he was talking about. He said he had stopped outside to smoke a cigarette and heard a huge crash of broken glass and me screaming his name in a bloodcurdling scream. He had been standing about 30 ft from where I was, and I heard absolutely nothing. To this day, I don't know if he was joking with me, but he swears he wasn't.
Finally, I was there cleaning the community part of the church by myself one night. The layout was a set of double doors in the front, followed by an open area. If you walked straight through, you would go straight to the back door, and to either side along the way, there were rooms, classrooms, kitchen, daycare. The last two doors on the left before you reached the back door were the men's and women's bathrooms. The front double doors were always locked with a chain and padlock wrapped around the outside door handles. When I took the chain off, I would always wrap it around the inside handles, but I wouldn't lock it. It was mainly just to keep the wind from blowing the doors open. So, I was cleaning the bathroom closest to the back door when I heard the water start running in the other bathroom. I stopped what I was doing and went to see what was going on. I got there and saw the toilet filling up like it had just been flushed. I watched for a moment and saw the water fill to the line and stop. Okay, faulty plumbing, I assumed. After the toilet stopped, I still heard the water running, so I took a quick look for the culprit. I didn't see anything, so I headed back to the original bathroom. I walked in and immediately the blood rushed from my face when I saw all three of the bathroom sinks pouring full blast. Steam was rising from the sinks and I realized it was the hot water. I gathered my composure and turned all the sinks off. I immediately turned, got in my car and went. I didn't even dust the pulpit, you guys. That's how scary this was. I got home and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table awake, which was out of the ordinary. He took one look at me and said, "We are canceling the church account." Nothing more needed to be said. To this day, whenever I ask him about it, he just says he had a bad feeling about it.