Creepy Stories: 27 Terrifying True Stories of Ghosts and Other Encounters with the Unknown (28 Photos)

Turn off the lights and hide under the blanket. Because you are not safe. These real creepy stories are much scarier than anything you can imagine.







1. Happy birthday



We moved to a new house a few months ago. During the process of buying a house, the tenant died unexpectedly at about 40 years of age. He died right in the middle of the living room. This did not interfere with the purchase and sale transaction, the documents were signed and soon we moved into this house. And then the fun began. Literally on the day of moving, our two-year-old daughter started talking about the ghost that lives in these walls.

If you think logically, my daughter is only 2 years old, and at this age children are VERY impressionable. Plus, Halloween had recently passed, and she also had a book about Halloween with pictures that she loved to look at. So it's quite possible that all this talk about ghosts was the result of flipping through the book. However, she talked about the ghost CONSTANTLY. That he was in her basement playhouse, that he was on the stairs, that a ghost was standing in the corner.

She seemed not to be afraid of him. Rather, I considered her a friend, so it didn’t bother me. Even if there was a ghost, it did not threaten the family in any way. I often told this "ghost" that he could stay as long as he wanted. At the same time, he added that he could leave if it would make him happier. I was 30 percent sure that there was some kind of ghost in the house. Until the day when we hurriedly got ready in the morning to take our daughter to the garden.

It was still dark outside and it was raining. My daughter came up to me and said that the ghost was now in the backyard. And then she said that today was his birthday and she wanted to sing “Happy Birthday” to him. I didn't pay attention to it again. We sang a song to the ghost, wished him luck and went about our business. That evening, out of pure curiosity (really!), I looked at the obituary of the man who died in our house.

Have you already guessed? It was his fucking birthday!

2. Nanny



This happened a couple of weeks ago and is the scariest moment of my life.

First, I need to explain that I often babysat a two-year-old child while his parents had dates. One day my friend was looking after him and at that moment the child began to talk to his “grandfather”. According to his parents, the boy never saw him because his grandfather died before he was born. From then on, when the boy stayed with me, I mentally prepared for something like this.

Sure enough, that evening, while we were in the living room, he started pointing at the blank wall in front of us. “Grandfather,” he repeated and repeated only this word. It is worth noting that he is only 2 years old and barely speaks. That's why I didn't ask him anything. Instead, in order to somehow distract myself (and I was scared!), I started talking about other things.

And then the child opened his eyes wide, grabbed the chair he was sitting on, chattered his teeth and began to tremble violently. I almost went crazy! I grabbed the baby and said loudly that it was time to watch a movie before bed.

Later that night, I was about to carry the boy upstairs to the nursery when I noticed that the front door was unlocked. I locked the door and tried the handle just in case (I have a mania, I do this all the time). After that, I took the child and took him to bed, he was already almost asleep by this time.

I was in his room for about 20 minutes. When he finally fell asleep, I quietly left and went downstairs. The front door is directly opposite the stairs and guess what?! THE DOOR WAS NOT LOCKED! I instantly thought of horror movies and decided to look around the whole house, but found nothing. I even checked the child's room. I didn’t check some of the bedrooms upstairs, because while I was in the nursery, the door was wide open and I would have seen if someone rushed past.

After making sure that everything was okay with the child, I went downstairs and just watched TV until my parents arrived. Oh, I also jumped at the slightest rustle, but there was nothing unusual anymore. It was the strangest night of my life. When I was again asked to babysit the boy, I refused this idea for an hour.

3. Accident



Something saved me after a car accident, and I don't know what it was.

We were driving home after a grueling trip. When turning on an icy road, I lost control and the car simply crashed into a stone. That day I didn’t wear a seat belt and was simply thrown out of the car through the windshield. One second I'm in the car, and the next I'm lying in the bushes.

I tried to get up, but severe pain in my shoulder prevented me from doing so (it turned out that I had broken my collarbone). And then I just lost consciousness.

After an unknown amount of time, through my closed eyes, I see that a light flashed above me (it was night). My father found me, easily lifted me to my feet and pushed me towards the car where my family was. I clearly remember his strong hands.

But the problem is that this did not happen. After talking with my brother later, I realized something. My father didn't look for me. He, my mother, and my brother were seriously injured in that accident and had no idea what had happened to me. They even assumed the worst - that I was already dead, right under the car. And there wasn’t even a flashlight in the car itself.

I don't know who or what found me there, I thought it was my father. Sometimes I talk about this in hopes of finding an answer. And the collarbone has healed so much that now it sticks out a little. And this bump is a constant reminder of that day.

4. Girl on all fours



There is one old bridge in my city. It periodically shows a girl who drowned in the river below it. If you come to the bridge at a certain time, you can hear her scream, which is supposedly haunted by a young girl who drowned in the river below.

I remember my friends and I going ghost hunting in high school. In general, there wasn’t even any entertainment in our city. A town of 6,000 people in good old Illinois. Half of them are prisoners and patients with mental illness.

I remember we reached that bridge at 3 am. After sitting for about 20 minutes, we found nothing and, of course, our ardor cooled down. We started making fun of each other; something like: “what stupid things we are doing.” And then this scream was heard.

The most blood-curdling, ear-piercing scream we've ever heard. And it wasn't just a scream. It didn't stop at all. Even when we were already leaving, this scream continued to drive us crazy. But this is not the worst thing.

When we first heard this scream, my friend and I went to the cars the fastest. To get to the parking lot you need to go down the hill a little and go under the bridge. Halfway to the cars we started running at the same moment. Here our horror stories were supplemented by an even worse incident. I never asked him what he saw that night. Because I saw it myself. It was a girl running on all fours into the forest.

I hardly told anyone about it because just thinking about that night gives me goosebumps. And those with whom I did share this do not take me seriously.

5. Farmer



My mother-in-law was a very funny and cool woman. Together with my wife, he and I were very close. Unfortunately, when our son was about 4 months old, she died. But let's move on to the incident itself. A few years later, when my son was already 3 years old, we lived in an old house from the 1930s in Pasadena.

One evening I was giving my son a bath and suddenly he started looking over my shoulder. He will look at some thing, then at something else. Another moment passed and he asked me: “Why does grandma call mom a funny name?”

Long heavy pause. I asked what he meant. I thought he was talking about MY mom. He asks again, but with clarification: “Why does my grandmother call my mother ****** (my mother-in-law called my wife that way). I literally gasped. My wife and I have never used this nickname. And in general, she called her that in childhood.

I asked my son where he got this nickname, and his answer simply shocked me.

"The farmer told me that." When I asked who this farmer was, I received the answer: “This is my friend.”

Later I told my wife about this. Of course she burst into tears. And from the situation with my son, and from the memories that came flooding back. Our son could not have known this at all; we were very surprised by this incident.

The next weekend my son was playing in his room. My wife was at work (retail) and I was working from home. I heard my son begin to speak, as if he were talking to someone. Something like “Yes”, “No”, “I don’t know that”, and then burst into laughter. This alarmed me, I went into his room and asked what he was doing. He replied that he was playing. What plays with the farmer.

I swear, at that moment I remembered the whole movie about exorcism! It scared the hell out of me. In a panic, I began to demand to show me this farmer, but my son said that he left as soon as I entered the room.

DAMN IT. When my wife returned home, I told her everything. She was scared just like me. The son told the same terrible stories. We had no idea what to do in such cases and what to do if it happened again. But we agreed that we will do something (at least something) next time.

A few days later, in the middle of the night, we heard our son talking to someone. “Grandma says you and I can’t be friends anymore.” We got scared and decided to find out what it was. He was just sitting in bed. I asked if he was okay and he told us the same thing again. That his grandmother forbids him to play with the farmer. Since then he has never mentioned the farmer again. Never. Now he is 13 years old and he doesn’t remember anything like this. But we haven't forgotten about it.

6. Man in a Top Hat



When my brother and I were about 4-5 years old, we lived in a house that was about 100 years old. One day we were walking up the stairs and saw a tall man in a black coat and top hat. He walked into the living room, which was to the left of the bottom of the stairs. A little scared, we thought that dad was playing a prank on us, so we called him. It was tough, because both mom and dad left the kitchen (and it’s generally on the other side and isolated from the living room).

I haven't thought about it for a long time, and we never talked about it at all. But about a month ago, my daughter asked if I believed in ghosts. I told her this story, and literally a few seconds later my phone rang. It was my brother who said, “I was just talking to my partner about the paranormal, do you remember the guy in the top hat?”

7. Night Visitor



Here is a terrible story that happened to me personally. When I was about 10 or 11, I often stayed up late. That day when I went to bed, I still felt restless. I wrapped myself in all my blankets and pressed myself against the wall (my double bed was flush with the wall). I lay awake in bed for probably an hour, and then I heard an alarming noise. Some kind of muffled crying. I focused on it, hoping that I was imagining it or that I was already dreaming.

However, after a few minutes I decided to check what those sounds were. I turned over in bed and saw a woman in a dress standing at the far end of my room, crying into her hands. Her hair was matted and her clothes were torn to shreds. She was very tall, her head was right under the ceiling, which means she was 2.5 meters tall. After a few seconds she looked at me and screamed. But this scream seemed to come from afar. Then she met my gaze, turned around and walked through the wall.

I didn't sleep that night.

8. Talking photo



When I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, I spent the night at my grandparents' house. I was lying on the couch trying to sleep when I heard a whisper. They had a photograph of my aunt hanging on the wall in their living room. And the whisper came precisely from her. The painting sounded exactly like my aunt. She asked if I was behaving well and told typical auntie stories. It sounds creepy, but I wasn't scared at all.

One day, the aunt from the photo asked me to wake up my grandfather. Ostensibly for a very important conversation. I woke him up, but when he realized that there was no one in the photo, he began to scold me.

In between the threats and insults, he noticed someone moving outside the window. He grabbed his gun and told me to stay in the room with my grandmother. A minute or two later we heard a shot. It turns out that there was a prison about 30 kilometers from their house. Three young men killed the guard and escaped. That evening they searched their house to steal a truck and steal everything that would fit into the car. However, grandfather noticed them first. It ended with one of those guys being shot in the shoulder.

I have no idea why that damn photo was talking to me. They had never encountered a ghost before or since. However, it was precisely because of that photograph that we all remained safe that night.

9. Bunker



I live in the north of Switzerland. We have a lot of old military bunkers here from World War II. When I was 7 or 8 years old, three of my friends and I went to explore one of these bunkers that was built on a hill in a small forest. The main door was stuck so we had to take it apart. We found a large log nearby and used it as a battering ram.

After many attempts, the door gave way. But there was a peephole on it, it was about 10 cm in diameter. We opened it and illuminated the darkness inside. There was a long, ruined and dark corridor with rooms to the left and right. We didn't see the end of the corridor - it was too long. We took turns looking inside until one of my friends said: “There is a small light at the end of the corridor.” But there was no light when I looked through the peephole. So I pushed him away and took another look.

What I saw made me shudder. There was no "little light" there. The light looked more like a flashlight, pointed directly at me, and behind it was the silhouette of a man. I took a few steps back and said: “Someone is there!” At that same moment, someone (or something) knocked on the door from inside the bunker. Panic set in, we screamed and started running away. I was so scared that I ran all the way to the house until I locked the door from the inside.

The next day at school my friends and I talked about this event. We came to the explanation that the older guys were playing a joke on us. A week later we went to this bunker again. But this time the door was completely welded shut. Moreover, it was clear that someone opened the door from the INSIDE. We just left without saying a word to each other. It is impossible for anyone to open this door. This was the only entrance. I still live in the same region.

20 years later I came to this bunker again. Everything here looked the same as it did then.

10. "It's Him"



I have four little cousins who never met my grandfather. He died before they were born. One morning, as usual, they ran downstairs to have breakfast. When my uncle was preparing food for them, one of them pointed to the refrigerator and said, “That’s it!”

My uncle, without really thinking, asked: “Who?” and looked back. They pointed to a photograph of my grandfather. My cousin replied, “The man who comes and talks to us at night until we sometimes fall asleep!” They all told the same creepy stories.

Not terrifying, but still... creepy.

11. Time travel



My friend and I traveled back in time. Or is this the simplest explanation.

We were in high school; came back to my house on the school bus. I was usually home by 14:45, and my mother returned from work by 15:00. We were planning to go camping that day, and to avoid my mother's refusal, I simply left her a note on the table.

We took the usual route up the hill in the backyard, trying to avoid the crazy people who lived there in makeshift houses. We spent some time climbing trees, exploring a section of the car graveyard we hadn't explored before, and doing other typical teenage exploration.

Not far from the top of the mountain we made a stop. It was unusually beautiful that day. There was simply incredible greenery from the trees around, and the light of the sun magically broke through their crown. We decided to run and play in those sun rays and then return home. It was already late, I was afraid that my mother would be angry if I missed dinner.

On the way back we came across a pond that we had never seen before. It was small and had a single wooden boat on it. There were several wigwams around the pond. But very old - they looked shabby and unusable.

We decided that someone lived there and took a new route home. After going up and down the old quarry, we came straight to the main road leading to my house. We were absolutely dirty, about a kilometer from home. So we just followed the road.

We returned home before my mother. This seemed strange to me, but it was more important then to quickly throw away that note so that my mother would not find out that we were walking somewhere at all. She arrived home literally 3 minutes later and wondered for a long time how we got so dirty at school. Not understanding anything, I looked at my watch. Mom arrived at her usual time. We were only gone for 13-15 minutes.

To be honest, we didn't even talk about that day anymore. It was too weird. But yes, we both decided that we had time traveled.

12. Old prison



I was on a tour of an old building in Australia. It used to serve as a prison for convicts sent from Great Britain. I was walking up the stairs when I felt pressure on my neck. I thought, “Hmm, this is weird,” and just rubbed my neck, hoping the feeling would go away. As we went down, the guide said that a man had hanged himself on these stairs, and people often reported something choking them.

I was very scared. But I didn’t tell anyone from the group about it, I thought they would laugh at me. All these paranormal creepy stories only amused them.

13. Pale white figure



One night when I was 12 years old, I was sitting in bed with my bedroom door open. I watched TV with a pillow under my head and shoulders. The TV was in one corner of the room and the door was in the other, the room was a perfect square shape.

I'm describing this to explain, I could see both the door and the TV at the same time (by the way, I was afraid of aliens at the time, don't judge). It was completely dark outside the door. And then I noticed movement in the corridor. I turned my head and saw a pale white man. He walked as if from left to right. And then he stopped and looked straight at me. In just a second he rushed to the threshold of my door and abruptly disappeared. And I was simply petrified.

Shaking under the blanket, I almost shit myself. Then I heard the garage door open and I shit myself even more. I ran down the stairs, and my 19-year-old drunken brother came out to meet me. After he listened to everything that happened to me, he grabbed a bat. Together we checked every room in the house, went under all the beds and closets. There was no one there, everyone at home was fast asleep.

Needless to say, I never slept with the door open again. Even now, 11 years later, I close the door to my room tightly every night.

14. Easter Bunny



When I was younger, I lived in the forest. From our back porch we could see the cemetery. One Easter I woke up and saw the Easter bunny (in some kind of terrifying costume). What amazes me most is that I still remember that smell of wet hay. That morning I found an extra Easter egg at home that my parents hadn't hidden.

Years later, when I was in high school, I asked my parents about that morning. They replied that they would never bother themselves so much as to dress up as some kind of rabbit. Later that day, my younger sister (we slept in the same room on a bunk bed as children) said that she remembered that morning. That Easter Bunny came into our room and made a comment about the smell of hay. I was horrified that our terrible stories were the same. That we both saw this ridiculously dressed man.

My friends from school added even more horror to me. When I told them about the incident, one of the girls shared her story. One Easter day she looked out the window for a long time in the middle of the night. And she, too, saw the Easter Bunny standing in her driveway. As I write, I have chills again. I still don’t understand who it was and whether it threatened our lives. But to this day I am terribly afraid of people in bunny suits.

15. Man by the Lake



This is my husband's story. In high school, he and his friends camped at the country house of a friend's aunt and uncle. They were doing the usual cooking, setting up a tent, and so on.

At some point during the night, my husband decided to take a walk near the small pond on the hotel grounds. Simply put, he wanted to go to the toilet. While minding his own business, he looked up and saw a man walking towards him along the edge of the pond. He clearly saw this man - he walked with his head down. Red flannel shirt, jeans and regular boots. It seemed strange to my husband that some guy was walking by the pond outside the city in the middle of the night. So he decided to ask, “Hey guy, what are you doing?” He did not receive an answer, and the guy continued to walk past him and was now looking away. And the next moment he simply disappeared.

The husband ran to tell his friends about this. The guy whose relatives owned the territory was simply shocked and immediately ran to wake up his aunt and uncle. They asked me to describe who my husband had seen, and when they heard his story, their faces suddenly changed. Then my aunt started crying.

It turned out that she constantly saw this guy. Only right in the house. Sometimes he stood at the foot of their bed. But her husband never believed her. He didn’t believe it, but he easily accused her of insanity (my husband understood that because of this they were on the verge of divorce). The guy's aunt was very relieved that someone else had seen this ghost. And her husband finally took her words seriously. I don’t know how their story ended, but my husband still remembers that night with fear.

16. Strange voices



That day I was at a friend’s house, apparently I fell asleep right on the couch. When I woke up, I realized that it was time to go home. I got up and saw the light in my friend’s room, but the door was closed. Approaching the door, I said that I was leaving because I had to work early tomorrow. He replied, “Yeah, see you!” and went to the refrigerator to get a drink. When I returned to the living room, I said to him, “See you later, man,” and he said, “Yeah.”

Something seemed strange to me. Not at all like my friend. So I went to the door, opened it, and there... There was no one there. THERE WAS NO ONE IN THE HOUSE AT ALL. When I went outside, I didn’t even see his truck.

I was scared as hell. I called him on his cell phone, and he said that he left for McDonald's about 15 minutes ago.

I ran outside and waited for him to come home. He told me that a child lived here many years ago. He hanged himself in the attic, and his friend constantly hears voices and sees strange things.

Even a neighbor confirmed this. After that, almost everyone who stayed with a friend had this paranormal experience. Everyone told similar horror stories. And my friend is just used to it. At most, when this bothers him beyond measure, he loudly shouts: “LEAVE ME ALONE!” He says that, oddly enough, it helps. But not for long, then everything starts again.

17. Stop now



Many years ago, when I was 14 years old, I spent the night at a friend's house. Besides me, there were three other guys my age. I knew everyone except one - he was the cousin of the guy in whose house we spent the night. The guy's older sister looked after us; she was 16 years old.

She dug up a Ouija board somewhere and decided to scare the crap out of us. You know, these were the days when these boards were sold in any toy store.

So we all gathered around the board and she started playing some kind of lie detector game. She asked each of us questions that could be answered yes/no. Everyone felt awkward and chuckled quietly. We even liked it, we learned each other’s secrets that we didn’t know about before.

Things got strange when she suddenly asked, “If anyone is here, please show yourself.” A few seconds of silence were broken by a framed picture falling from the wall. Of course we were all scared! But she tried to calm us down, saying that we all needed to return to the circle. Supposedly, we need to help the one who knocked down the painting.

With ashen faces and pounding hearts, we began asking questions. And I should also add that the pointer now moved smoothly and quickly. Completely different than before.

Are you in the room? Something says yes. You are a man? "No". Do you need help? "No". What is your name? The pointer points to S-A-R-A. Tell us a secret, we ask... The pointer points to the coin.

That's what we did. Someone got up from the table and took 10p from the change jar in the kitchen. In those days 10p coins were big and thick. We tossed a coin, it, spinning, flew high into the air. But when it began to descend, it stopped rotating. The coin landed serenely on its edge on the table. She didn’t jump, she didn’t sway, she just sank down onto the table, as if someone had put her on the table.

We were simply silent, in shock. And then the pointer started moving again. He moved somewhat chaotically, pointing at different letters. We didn't understand anything until it dawned on us that these were initials. Including middle names. The family tradition of a friend and his sister was to have 3 middle names at once. None of us knew the older sister's full name at all. That night, that “something” spelled each of our names and initials correctly.

And then the pointer paused and pointed to the last 3 words. CHILDREN. STOP, NOW.

It took me many, many weeks to fall asleep normally again. No one told our parents about this, and over the years it became our shared secret. I didn’t have a rational explanation for this then, and I don’t have one now. There were some truly creepy stories that night.

18. CCTV camera



I used to work in a place that required me to work 24 hours a day. I handled sensitive documents and files, and if someone needed that information in the middle of the night, I would have to bring it to them (or confirm that I had it).

Either way, security is pretty tight. Bars on the windows, many locked doors to get to the workplace. They gave me work overnight, but they calculated how quickly I could complete it. So, as always, that night I finished my work in about 30-45 minutes, took out my phone, played games and watched Netflix (since there is no one else in the building at night).

A third of that shift was already over when I suddenly heard the door close. I looked at the security camera and saw someone walking down the corridor to my office. I decided that one of my colleagues had decided to make a joke, so I turned to the door and waited for someone to enter. But no one came in. The hairs all over my body stood on end.

Our building is small, and I decided that I would find that guy myself. I checked all the offices and warehouses - no one. However, as I was returning to my office, I saw the fire door closing. I went into the office to rewind the cameras, but it turned out that the rewind was protected by a password, and I didn’t know it. I was scared by how decisively that man walked towards my office.

Finally, my shift came to an end. I spent the last 2 hours sitting in such tension that my back just ached. Colleagues began to arrive, I was glad that I was about to be replaced. After I told about what happened that night, my fellow shift worker asked me to go home. The colleague said that she would wait for the manager and they would look at the cameras together.

When I got home, I called the manager and asked what was on the camera. The video showed the fire door closing, but then the video froze for about an hour, and the next thing it recorded was me opening the door.

19. Marks on my face



Throughout my life, I have lived in truly paranormal places. This is one of the events that I remember most.

One morning I woke up and, as usual, went to the mirror to brush my teeth. There was such an absurd room there - a sink and a balcony door, but there were no windows. In general, that morning in the reflection of the mirror I saw one of my plants swaying. It felt like the wind was blowing on him. I turned and went to the pot - it was standing right next to the balcony door - and checked if the door was closed. Closed.

Returning to the mirror, for some reason I looked at the desk on which the fountain pens lay. And when I looked at the mirror, I saw marks from those feathers all over my face. My heart stopped and goosebumps ran throughout my body. I quickly cleaned myself up and ran out of the room. And a couple of minutes later I looked there again. And I saw the balcony door wide open.

My God, from then on I was generally afraid to go into that room again and at the first opportunity I moved out of there.

20. Golden light



My mother had a seizure in her sleep (she was an epileptic). During the attack, she wrapped herself in her blankets and passed out from lack of breath. Paramedics were able to revive her and take her to hospital. It was early in the morning, around 4:30 am.

I was instructed to call all the relatives to inform them that my mother was in the hospital. The first and most important call was to my grandmother (her mother). However, before I picked up the phone and dialed her number, the phone rang. It was my grandmother who called. It was already 5:30 for us, 2:30 am in her time zone. She wanted to tell us that she saw my mother bathed in golden light. She claimed to have been in contact with her mother, but now she is dead and on her way to a better place.

At that moment I did not know that my mother would die. Her father was with her in the hospital and also did not know that she would die. Even the doctors did not yet know that she was already brain dead. But my grandmother somehow found out about this and contacted me.

Incredibly creepy.

21. Woman in the window



My friends and I were walking to a cemetery a couple of blocks from our house on Halloween. As they say - because why not? All these terrible stories are not scary for us. There is a building nearby where new restaurants are constantly opening and closing. Neither one stays long. Essentially, the cemetery is the “backyard” of that building. That night, for some reason, the lights were on in the building, and a woman in a pink dress stood in the window and just looked at us. But we all knew that the building was empty, that no one had yet managed to rent space there.

My friends and I were very tense. We walked along the building, constantly watching that woman, and every second we understood more and more clearly that something was wrong here. This woman followed us. From window to window. But she seemed to be sliding, not walking. We were seriously scared and ran away from there as quickly as we could. However, when we ran to the end of the building, we saw in horror that she was standing there. Outside. There are no windows at the end at all. She just stood there, watching us run on. From that night we never walked through cemeteries again in our lives.

22. Small world



Back in my college days, I was walking home with my sisters from a sorority meeting. We didn't live on campus, but were about a 20 minute walk away. It was about 2:00 in the morning, and at first we were alone on the streets. No cars, no pedestrians, no one.

But then we noticed a man walking towards us. He was a tall, elderly white man on crutches with a black dog by his side.

We parted ways to let him pass on the side path. And then we greeted him, but he didn’t pay any attention to us. However, his dog looked at us in fear and quickly clung to its owner.

A few blocks later we heard that distinct sound of crutches again. We approached the intersection, and around the bend we saw the same man again. We stepped aside again, joking about how small the world was and asking if he was lost. However, he silently continued on his way again. At the same time, his dog looked at us with the same frightened look and clung to him in the same way.

So, we almost got to the house and heard the sound of those crutches again. Only this time we didn’t understand where exactly it was coming from. We turned onto our street, and halfway to our house, we finally saw that man with crutches. He left the house, OUR HOUSE, and just walked past us. His dog ran over us again with his frightened eyes and ran away closer to the man. Only this time the dog was YELLOW!

To this day I cannot understand how a man on crutches caught up with us so many times. How did he know where we lived? And what happened to the dog that changed color?! What kind of terrible stories and persecutions are these?

23. Warning



When I was in college, I often went home to my hometown (145 km away) on weekends. One day, on another weekend, my friend decided to go with me, but she was going to go in her car.

On Saturday evening I had a very vivid dream. In it, a little girl came up to me and said, “Please...take care of my sister.” And she showed me a photograph of a car accident on the highway. There were two cars there - a silver Corolla (my friend's car) and a black Ford Explorer.

The next morning I immediately called her, told her about this dream and asked if she had a sister. That's why I only saw her brothers. Her answer shocked me: “Well... my mother once gave birth to a stillborn girl.” I asked how old she would be today, to which she replied: “Five.” I immediately connected this age with the girl from the dream and became even more worried. I assumed that it was her sister and persuaded my friend to go in my car. The next night, sitting at home in my hometown, I accidentally turned on the news, where they showed a car accident. The same stretch of highway, but this time it was just that Ford. Honestly, it still scares me to this day.

24. Footprint



I would like to start by saying that a lot has happened in this house. But I will share the most frightening one. Backstory: The area where my home is located was once open prairie. We kept finding Native American artifacts scattered around the area.

When my parents divorced (I was still a teenager), my mother and I moved into this house. At first everything seemed great! There was a lot of space and the house was very cozy. However, over time, strange things began to happen in the house. The more I noticed them, the more frequent they became. For example, I heard someone coming down the stairs while brushing their teeth. Of course I assumed it was my mom, but every time I checked, no one was there. Soon footsteps became a common occurrence. Especially at night. After some time, it finally dawned on me what the reason was. The reason is that this house was haunted!

This is where things got really creepy. One day my friend and I returned from a walk to my house. Mom was on a business trip at the time, so we decided it would be really cool to hang out in an empty house together. We could have something to drink or do whatever activities we wanted. We were wrong.

Having entered the house, we immediately went to the basement. It was cooler there than the rest of the house. As I walked down the stairs, I noticed that the Beatles Yellow Submarine poster hanging at the bottom of the stairs was tilted slightly to the left. I thought I must have touched him or something. As I passed by, I corrected him and we headed further into the room. It is worth noting that posters and photographs were hung all over the walls in the basement. I fixed it and we went into the main room. And there we were seriously scared. All the photographs and posters in the room were tilted slightly to the left. Just like that poster by the stairs. But the weirdness didn't end there. The door to the storage room was ajar. And the pantry is essentially a room with dirt instead of a floor. I walked up to the door and froze - some kind of golden glow was coming from there. There was a switch about 3 meters from the door.

I pulled myself together, ran into the closet and turned off the light. Looking for a rational explanation, I called my mother. But she said that she did not know what was wrong and that she had not gone down to the basement for several weeks before leaving. A shiver ran down my spine. I looked around the closet and noticed a footprint in the dirt. It was the most twisted trail imaginable. I was frozen with fear. My friend too. We looked at each other silently, experiencing a sickening, gut-wrenching feeling. I slammed the closet door and locked it, and then we ran out of the house as quickly as we could. I will never forget how disgusting and ugly that trail looked. And the thought that I even decided to go there and turn off the light knocks the ground out from under my feet.

25. Ritual



After my grandmother's death, according to tradition, my family performed this ritual. Essentially, a sanctuary is created for the deceased. During the first 7 days after death, at 7 pm, we were silent for an hour. So we allowed the spirit to return and say goodbye. On the last day of the ritual, a glass vase that stood directly above the shrine fell and broke while we were sitting silently in the next room. Back then we were already a little on edge, and then there was this. The vase stood there quietly for many years and even the windows were all closed.

After a quiet hour, we called my aunt, who also spent this hour in silence at home. The first thing my aunt started to say was that something strange had happened. She and her entire family were gathered on the second floor when one of the doors on the first floor slammed shut. They checked all the doors, the house was locked, the windows were also locked. They couldn't understand what happened. But what’s even more frightening is that all the doors in the house were open. My aunt had lived in that house for over 10 years and had never encountered anything like this.

I'm not saying anything supernatural happened that night. But these creepy stories definitely make me shiver all over.

26. Knife



This is not a story about ghosts or haunted houses or anything else. It's about living in a place for 10 years and feeling how that place suddenly turns against you. Places have their own feel, the country around you has its own feel that you get used to.

I used to live on an old southern plantation turned horse farm. Over 1000 acres of woodland or grassland. One day I was exploring one of the horse trails in the woods about 20 minutes from home with my dogs and decided to accidentally leave the trail.

I went anywhere. Turn 90 degrees, go down into the spring, then climb under the ancient barbed wire fence and wander around for a while. So I walked until I found 2 large limestone caves directly opposite each other. Both entrances were blocked by a pile of stones piled haphazardly on top of each other. But the entrances were completely blocked.

Honestly, this is the only reason I wanted to go inside. But common sense dictated that it was better not to do this. In the end, I was even without a phone and no one knew where exactly I was. What if a snake bites me or I break my leg on the rocks? So I took a quick look around the caves and found that damn old knife. Amazing knife. It looked like someone had carved it out of a deer antler.

As soon as I took the knife in my hands, the forest seemed to change. If you have ever lived outside the city in the same place for a long time, you will understand me. My dogs came closer and pressed themselves against me. I felt clearly unwelcome. I put the knife down and hoped that everything would go away. But this terrible feeling did not pass until I was completely out of the forest and almost back home.

After that I never felt comfortable being alone in those woods. One moment I'm happy and exploring the world, and the next there's someone watching me. The one who hates me very much. I'm sure it could be explained by nerves or something else. But! Later I looked for caves, but never found them. And this despite the fact that he knew exactly where he left his tracks.

I know that feeling of connection to the earth. Previously, I could wake up, go outside and immediately understand if something was wrong. A sick horse or a stressed horse, people hunting on our land or not. I can't explain it, I just feel it and that's all. Whatever I felt when I picked up that knife was very, VERY hostile. This was probably my most inexplicable experience.

27. Basement



The story is about how I lived at my brother's house. Two months after my brother and his wife bought a new house, they had to leave town. But they had cats to feed. Their house, like my office, was located not far from my apartment (literally a couple of minutes by car). Therefore, my brother immediately offered to live with them, instead of driving back and forth every day, and then also going to work. So, I received the house keys and instructions. And he lived in their house for only three nights - Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Three creepy stories.

Monday evening passed without incident. But only until midnight. Lying on the living room couch, I watched Conan (their cat) while the cat lay on my chest. I was already starting to fall asleep. The next thing I knew, I was standing in pitch darkness. I was completely distraught. And I had no idea where I was. I felt everything around in the dark and felt nothing. Finally I realized that there was actually a faint blue light coming from above. I moved towards him and only then realized where I was. I was in the fucking basement! Light came through the basement door at the top of the stairs that led to the kitchen. There seemed to be a fair amount of moonlight coming through a window elsewhere in the kitchen. I ran up the stairs, turned on the kitchen light and closed the door to the basement. I was terrified until I calmed down enough to come to the conclusion you've probably already come to - I walked down the stairs myself in my sleep (and even opened the basement door, which I knew was locked).

A couple more things are important to the story. Firstly, the basement. The house was very nice—more than they could afford, in fact. The only exception was the basement. I only saw the basement once, when I first took the tour. It wasn't repaired at all. He was the only important thing they wanted to fix. All they had there were a few boxes and a washer and dryer. I had no reason to want to go down there, and I kind of forgot about its existence.

Another thing is that sleepwalking is the norm in my family. My brother constantly talked in his sleep, and sometimes walked. And it always scared the hell out of me. The thought of people doing things in their sleep just scares me to the core (still does). My brother knew about it and often teased me about it, so it was known in my family that I had this phobia. But as far as I know, before that night I had never, ever sleepwalked. The image of me sleeping, getting up from the couch, going to the kitchen, opening the basement door, and shuffling down the stairs in complete darkness played over and over in my head. It's creepy as hell.

Anyway, I saw that the TV in the living room was still on and The Wedding Planner was playing on it. I watched the rest of the movie, trying to laugh and think of sleepwalking as a funny story to tell my brother. Then I went upstairs to the guest room and fell asleep. This was the first night.

The next morning, in daylight, it didn't seem so bad. I wrote to my brother about it and joked. It didn't bother me at all all day. But when I walked out of the office to the car, a feeling of fear came over me. Suddenly. The thought of going to bed in that house—and possibly sleepwalking again—terrified me. So I came up with a plan. Stopped at a hardware store and picked up one of those rubber door wedges. At my brother's house, I stuck it in the crack under the basement door and kicked it until it went as far as it would go. Then I tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Perfect.

By nightfall I went upstairs and fell asleep. And when I woke up, I swear to God, it seemed to me that I was dreaming. I stood in the dark again, but this time I knew exactly where I was. The smell is the same. The concrete floor under my feet is the same. I looked around for the light from above, but at first I couldn't find it because it was further away. Last night I was very close to the stairs. This time the stairs were about 5 meters away. I jumped up the stairs and turned on the light in the kitchen. I saw a rubber wedge right on the floor, a meter away from me, as if it had been thrown there. I tried again to imagine myself as a sleepwalker. From the bedroom, down the stairs, I try to open the door to the basement. I bend down and pull out the wedge. And then I slowly descend into the darkness again.

I decided to turn on the light in the basement and leave it on. I opened the door and flipped the switch on the stairs to the basement. But I saw that the main switch was at the bottom of the stairs. To give you an idea of the layout, a staircase divides the basement into two parts. To the right is a small area with a washer and dryer, and to the left is a large open area.

So, I went down and turned on the lights in the entire basement. That's when I noticed something I hadn't noticed on that first excursion. About 5 meters away, on a large platform, there was a door to a small closet. This door was closed, but had no doorknob (only an empty hole). It seemed as if it would open freely. I realized that I had just woken up somewhere near this door. Then a damn strange thought occurred to me: every night I was heading towards the door. And each time he walked a little further before he woke up. As soon as this thought occurred to me, I went back up the stairs, left the light on and closed the door. I went up to the bedroom, but it took me forever to fall asleep. This was the second night.

The next morning, Wednesday, I woke up late for work. I didn't think about the basement at all because I was in a hurry to get ready. However, at work I was still curious about what was behind the door. So I wrote to my brother and asked. He responded, “Wait...why were you in the basement?” I realized that when I wrote to him the day before, I never said where exactly I woke up. After thinking a little, I finally decided and wrote about it. And he clarified that he actually woke up in the basement for 2 days in a row. After some time, he sends a message the length of a novel. About how creepy it is in the basement, not to go down there, and so on. How they tried to put litter boxes in the basement and the cats made a mess of the house because they refused to come down. How he voluntarily takes on any job except laundry, just so he doesn’t have to go down there. He wrote all this, and I read it and couldn’t believe it. Because my brother never believed in the paranormal or superstitions, ever since we were kids. I also realized that he never answered my question, but I already had no time.

After work, I felt the same feeling of dread on the way to the car. I really didn't want to stay there again. And I decided that I didn’t need all this. I’ll arrive, feed the cats, pick up my things and immediately return home. In the morning I’ll just stop by again to feed them and goodbye. As I went to bed in my apartment, I thought about all the steps I would have to take to get back down to the basement in my dream. Find your car parked a block away, drive to your brother’s house in a dream, and so on. But this time I slept through the night. This was the third night.

On Thursday morning I stopped by the house as planned. I was about to leave when I remembered that the light was still on in the basement. Without hesitation, I went downstairs to turn it off. There was something about being there in the morning. That morning the basement seemed like a wonderful place. Going downstairs, this door caught my eye again. She no longer seemed scary, so why not examine her? I walked up to the closet and clearly remember that I didn’t feel afraid at all. Until... Until I reached my hand to the doorknob hole to open it. As soon as I did this, I felt this electric sensation (instantly!). Like the air before a storm. I imagined a hand coming through this hole and grabbing my hand. It was like pedaling from 0 to 60 km/h, going from no fear to certainty that something terrible would happen if I opened that door. It's hard to describe it other than this electric feeling. I took the remaining things upstairs and left the house.

A month later, I met my brother for happy hour. After drinking a couple of drinks, we started joking about me, sleepwalking and the creepy basement. I reminded him that he never answered me about what was behind the door. And he said that I don’t want to know. At first he joked, but then he began to insist. Finally he told me. And I didn't believe him. This is the older brother who has screwed me over a million times throughout my life.

In his words: the previous (and first) owners of the house had a teenage daughter who equipped the basement for her bedroom. The door led to her closet, where one night she curled up, took a few pills and killed herself. The family was planning to remodel their basement, but after tearing it apart, they realized they couldn't do it. They had to move. That's why only the basement was unfinished. And that’s why my brother could afford this huge house. The seller had to report that there had been a suicide at the residence. He said if I didn't believe him, look up the market value of identical houses on his track (I know what they paid for their house and it turned out to be much cheaper). He and his wife considered themselves adequate people and did not refuse an incredibly profitable deal. Only they decided not to tell anyone about the history of the house. After they moved in, his wife loved the basement. But my brother hated this basement. He apologized for not telling me anything before I stayed there. But he didn’t even think that I would have any reason to go downstairs.

Now this is what convinced me. I said, “Okay, the only thing that makes me believe you is that on the last morning I was there, I walked up to the closet door,” and at that moment I saw my brother's face change. However, I decided to finish: “When I went to open it, the air was like...” and at the same moment I said “electricity” and my brother said “electricity.” We said it at the same time, I saw his face and realized that he was telling the truth.

I never set foot in that basement again, and I haven't sleepwalked since.