These Folks Reveal the Strangest, Unexplainable Things They've Ever Experienced IRL - Goosebumps Ahead
These 30 strange stories are from real people sharing their experiences in online forums.
Was there an experience you've had that was so bizarre you've never forgotten about it to this day? You'd probably even talk about it when the conversation turns to the supernatural things.
Or have you had a deja vu experience or an unexplained feeling that something is about to happen, only to find it happening later the way you sensed it? Strange, yes, but these things do happen – if not to you, then to other people.
Stories of supernatural experiences seem to validate the existence of beings, spaces, or even things that defy logical and scientific explanation. It does seem there's a plane of existence that is beyond the natural order of things.
Some react by ignoring the bizarreness of it all and taking it in stride, while others go into that rabbit hole and seek answers. Which one of these two are you?
A post on Reddit that has since blown up got many people sharing their own goosebumps-inducing real-life stories. Some are astoundingly movie or novel-worthy, while others are the kind many would probably relate with.
Here are 30 of those weird stories, some of which will give you the chills on top of the goosebumps, while some are actually rather inspiring despite being bizarre.
1. Watchful Protector
When I was a kid (about 10-12ish) I was carrying a load of laundry upstairs home alone while mom was out doing errands. We have this weird carpet runner over our hard wood stairs that's only really attached at the top of the flight but otherwise not fitted or secured to each individual stair, so naturally I step on an air bubble of carpet with my vision obscured by the laundry and fall backwards while bear hugging a bunch of blankets.
I specifically remember thinking, "Welp, guess I'm about to die," while almost airborne with just my big toe left on the carpet when I felt two hands, one on either side of my shoulder blades, give me a firm shove that launched me back up on the step and diagonally against the stair rail. I assumed mom somehow silently came back early without announcing herself and turned around to thank her while still clinging to the railing, but no one was there.
I scurried upstairs to put my things down while calling her name and walked the house afterwards to check if any doors were unlocked or if her car was there. I finally resorted to calling her cell where she told me she was hitting up a few more stores.
It still feels like there's a presence on that stairwell - like someone's watching but in a protective way rather than sinisterly.
Ýlona María Rybka
Although supernatural occurrences may go beyond the scope of science, there have been attempts to observe and explain them using scientific approaches. The Society for Psychical Research, for one, was established in 1882 in the United Kingdom to examine such phenomena with a scientific eye.
This association also looked into certain psychic capabilities, such as clairvoyance and telepathic abilities. The members also studied phenomena involving communication with spirits and hauntings.
As it turns out, the society was not able to produce definitive conclusions from the phenomena they studied over a long period of time. Because of this, it received criticism from the scientific community and gained a rather controversial reputation.
To this day, supernatural phenomena remain dodgy in the eyes of researchers and scientists as those could not be defined by scientific parameters. Despite this, many still believe in the psychic and the uncanny, as you can see from the stories featured here.
2. Owl Be Watching You
Super minor compared to many in this thread.
Night before thanksgiving 3 years ago I was across the country at my parents, driving back to theirs with my now-wife from a friend's house. As we draw near, there is some type of bundle in the middle of the road.
I stopped and pulled off to move it, and it turned out to be a barred owl that got clipped by a car. Long story short I spend the rest of that night getting the owl into a puppy cage, gave it some food and water, and the next day dropped it off at a wildlife rescue center.
I got home the next week, all the way across the country (New Jersey to Oregon). I stepped outside and there was a barred owl sitting on my fence watching me. It was gone by the time I got back. But now I know I'm straight with all owls.
- abxytg
Philip Brown[ADVERTISEMENT]
“The word ‘psychic’ comes from the Greek word for ‘the soul’. People who are psychic see and know things that are of the unknown, and they often tune into different aspects of someone's soul,” said Chanda Parkinson, a psychic and author of "Meditations for Psychic Development" who uses her abilities to help other people seek their own gifts.
“For example, psychics can receive specific information about someone's mission, spiritual gifts, upcoming opportunities, and challenges to overcome," she explained further.
Parkinson also said that there is a sense of responsibility for such psychic gifts. She also said that each person receives said that a key aspect to such abilities is "the belief that there’s a receiving mechanism inside of us (sort of like our own sixth-sense antenna) and each of us receives through this mechanism or antenna differently."
3. A Different Homecoming
One night I had a dream about my Grandpa (who had died almost 20 years prior). We were in his home, and he kept telling me, “We need to clean the house, we need to get the house ready.”
When I asked him why, he just said, “She’s coming home.”
My Grandma, his wife of 50 years, died the next day.
John Sekutowski[ADVERTISEMENT]
4. Grandaddy's Girl
My granddad died when I was 7, but, per his own words, I was his absolute favorite (partially because I am the splitting image of his mother, even into adulthood).
When I was 21, I was set to give birth to my first son. I was about to get into the elevator to L&D when a man came in saying that he a volunteer and he'd help me and my husband find our way.
The elevator was slow, but we spent the time talking about what a blessing children are and how they grow up so fast. Here's the thing: he looked and sounded exactly like my grandad - same stature, same blue-grey eyes, same faint Scottish-Canadian accent, same khakis, checked shirt, and sky blue cardigan. Even spookier is that the nurses said they don't have any older male volunteers in that particular building.
I don't really believe in ghosts but I am absolutely certain granddad paid me a visit that night.
She went on to explain how intuition is different from being psychic, although both work harmoniously with each other.
“Intuition is how our internal compass responds to stimulus in our environment," she clarified. "Intuition manifests as a gut feeling, or in symbols which offer us messages of guidance to either validate or counter the choices we are making.”
Perhaps Parkinson's explanations may add clarity to some of the supernatural phenomena that you (or people you know) experience or why these are even occurring.
5. One Faun Night
I have … quite a few actually. But one that happened pretty recently stands out.
I grew up in a very rural area. Mostly crop farms everywhere. About a mile from my parent’s house, there was this old abandoned farm house that all the area kids said was haunted. They would sneak into the house after dark, all the typical stupid kid crap, but I believe there are things in this world better left alone and never went.
Years pass, the house fell into disrepair and was eventually torn down, leaving an old weathered barn. Well, I make a little side money selling photos of abandoned places, so I wanted to take a picture of the barn. I parked on the road and was walking up the drive, I made it about ten feet before I just could not walk any further. My feet wouldn’t move forward, my adrenaline spiked and I burst into tears. So I turned back and ran to my car. I didn’t feel safe until I got past a nearby creek you have to cross to get there.
I let it go, but a few months later we had to drive past the property after having Christmas dinner with my parents and there was a creature standing in the drive. It reminded me of the Faun from Pan’s Labyrinth, just super tall with a wide head and horns or antlers, but the eyes were more on the side of the head.
Again adrenaline kicked in and I burst into tears, but I was trying to keep it together because I didn’t want to freak out my kids. My husband asked if I was okay, I just said, “You saw that, right”
“Yep”
“Was it human”
“Nope”
I refuse to drive that road ever again.
Bored Panda
6. Love Beyond the Grave
There's a story from when I was ~4-5 years old, my grandmother was looking through old family photos and asking me who the people were. We got to a picture of my grandfather, and she asked me who he was, and I said, "Pop poppy Jim!"
He died suddenly at home when my mother was 10, in the same house we lived in, so I never met him. She asked me how I knew that, I told her, "Oh he comes and tucks me in and tells me he loves me sometimes after you go to bed."
- jessiker
Markus Spiske[ADVERTISEMENT]
Dr. Divi Chanda, also a book author and a believer of using intuition in one's personal growth, would agree with Parkinson. A medical professional and the person behind Center of Mind Body Spirit Medicine, she said that all of us have "untapped psychic abilities" but are hardly using them.
However, these can be awakened and strengthened.
“I am the classic example of someone who didn’t ‘know’ she had psychic abilities and ‘woke’ mine up," she revealed. "I spent thirty-five years (ten of which were spent working as a physician) without knowing of them."
"Now, my profession relies on my psychic intuitive abilities!” she added.
7. Dad's Lucky Hunch
Many years ago, my parents had separated and my father was planning on taking a trip across the country to California. He was pretty excited about it.
I talk to him the day before he's leaving, wish him well and tell him I'll talk to him after he get's to California.
The day of his trip, he calls me and tells me he decided last minute not to go. Refuses to really get into why. Just says he changed his mind. Seemed really odd for something that he had been planning for a couple months.
That night I'm sitting at my girlfriends' house and we're watching the news, and they report that US Air Flight 1493 - the flight my dad was supposed to be on - collided with another aircraft while landing in Los Angeles. About 25% of the people on the flight were killed. Hard to know how my Dad would have made out, because it really depended on where you were sitting (front vs. back of the plane).
It was several months before he finally told me that night before he was supposed to leave, he had an extremely vivid dream that he died in a fiery plane crash. So vivid that it scared him out of flying that day.
My dad is a marine corps Vietnam veteran who saw combat. I can only imagine how vivid the dream must have been, to scare him out of getting on that plane that morning.
Believe it or not I've never actually watched Final Destination. Now I HAVE to see it!
Bored Panda[ADVERTISEMENT]
8. A Cry for Help
I had a dream once about my high school best friend who had moved out of state and started a family. I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her in at least 10 years and had never met her child, except seeing pictures/ posts on Facebook and commenting on them.
In my dream I was walking down a street at night and out of nowhere her little girl appears next to me and I asked her, “Where is your mama? Why are you by yourself?” I remember her taking me to some bushes near a random house on the street and finding my friend in bad shape (beaten up or something) on the ground and I remember running to the door of the random house screaming for help and to call the police. This is all I can recall from the dream but I think there may have been a little more.
The next day, I wake up and think to myself, man that was weird. Maybe I dreamt of her because we had just spoken a little in comments of a Facebook post, I should send her a message. I go on about my day, go to work, get home later that day and sit on my couch and scroll through Facebook.
BAM. 1000 posts— Rest In Peace, etc - All of them tagged my friend and her daughter. I thought WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F*CK!?!? At that point there was no information as to what had happened, so I thought it must have been a car accident or something. Over the course of the next few weeks to months, more and more information came out and it was NOT an accident. My friend and her sweet baby had been murdered by some animal (I won’t refer to them as a person).
This happened about 5 years ago. I still remember the main parts of the dream vividly. I still am a little horrified that I had this dream that night. When it was happening possibly. I haven’t been able to tell anyone else about it either because just thinking about it gives me chills.
Nathan Kosmak
9. The Night Watch
Woke up one in the middle of the night to a man standing next to the bed staring at my SO. He was slightly translucent and I figured it was just another sleep paralysis episode (had them before so knew the drill), and rolled over and went to go back to sleep.
Normally being able to move isn't part of sleep paralysis, and immediately my heart began to race as I realized I need to roll over and check what I saw. Person was still standing there, staring at my SO, then he made eye contact with me. Stared at me for a while before turning around and walking to the wall, slowly fading away with each step.
Next morning SO wakes up looking like shit and said she had the worst night sleep because she kept having the feeling that someone was watching her. Glad we no longer live in that house.
Steinar Engeland[ADVERTISEMENT]
Dr. Chanda believes that using and strengthening this intuition makes life "so much happier and more free." "Decisions get easier, life gets easier and we can flow more with everything life is throwing at us," she noted.
She also mentioned that desire is essential in awakening this intuition. Meditation is also critical for quieting one's mind in order to be more in touch with how one's intuition is functioning.
Further, she said that personal study is also important in discovering one's best qualities and that one should push beyond discouragement to find new strategies in learning and growing.
10. Saved By the Hand
Was in college walking to class. Went to cross a busy street and a hand grabbed my shoulder (quite hard) and stopped me. A car zoomed by that would’ve killed me. Nobody was behind me or anywhere close enough to have stopped me. Guardian angel?
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11. The Vanishing Worker
Working as night security for a small office at a sanitation plant. Building was a single entrance and you had to check in at the security station to get in or out.
A worker shows up and checks in saying he needs to take care of a few things and grab some stuff. So I check in his ID and flip a few lights for him then go back about my business.
Fast forward a few hours and my shift is about to end, I still haven't seen the guy come back. So I go patrol the building to find him and literally can't find him anywhere.
He's not in any of the areas I turned lights on for him, no other lights are on, and he's not in any other rooms. I stop by security to see if we just missed each other and he's trying to leave, but nobody is there.
I do a second patrol and still no signs. At this point I went to check cameras to see where he went, but he's not on a single camera except the one covering the entrance and security station.
He turns down a hallway and never shows up on the next camera down said hall. At this point I logged it as an incident, and GTFO right as the relief shift showed up.
Next day my boss calls me and says that worker had been on vacation out of state for several days, and wouldn't return for several more. Nobody could offer any explanation to what happened.
Collin Armstrong[ADVERTISEMENT]
12. Time-Travelling Dog
I was about 15 and trying to sleep but having an asthma attack. Late in the night I started hearing a rhythmic breathing from the floor next to the bed.
It wasn't scary, more comforting. And it wasn't me, because my breathing sounded way more fucked up than that.
It helped me calm down and get to sleep, even though I was still sick (I was able to get my hands on an inhaler in the morning). At the time I thought it was a friendly ghost. I later rationalized that maybe I was hearing a family member through the heating ducts.
What I realized years later, when I had a dog, was that it had sounded exactly like a big dog sleeping next to the bed. So now I'm 50/50 on whether a ghost dog came to visit me, or my own dog time traveled back about ten years before she was born to comfort me.
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13. Dave's Goodbye
Already posted this a year and a half ago but I'll go again. I have to make a bit of a premise, when I was little the woman that came to clean my house (I'll call her Mary) while my parents where working was also my babysitter, usually after she ended up cleaning she would bring me to her house until my mom would come and pick me up. There during the year I knew her whole family, among these was her husband that I'll call Dave. So Dave was a pretty cool guy, just the average elder you would find in any rural town, he liked to drink wine with his friends at the bar, go hunting and he had a lot of good and interesting stories to tell me when i was a kid, and after all these years spent together he basically considered me as a grandson. Now back when covid hit for the first time in my country i had a dream one night where Mary was coming to my house to clean as every other week, but this time in my living room there was a closed black coffin. When i asked her what was in there she looked at me and said in a sad tone: "Dave is inside there." Now if that wasn't strange enough i remember waking up later that night and feeling a presence to the side of my bed, and i distinctly remember to have said while still being half asleep: "Come on Dave let me get back to sleep." Next morning when I woke my parents told me that Mary had called saying that Dave had passed that night due to covid complication, to this day i still haven't told anyone about it and i am still a bit freaked out from the whole story. Also sorry for format and grammar but i'm on mobile and English isn't my first language.
- Uzzo_99
14. Mysterious Passenger
When I was going to my family's home I got in an SUV going down the road. This was in Bangladesh at the time and after taking the SUV the next two hours would be a highway going down a forest. I was sitting shotgun and along the highway there was an old man walking down the highway. He was hitchhiking and the driver decided to pick him up. He insisted on sitting in my seat and obliged as he was an older man.
About an hour down the drive our car collided with a bus and the shot gun seat was mangled up. We all got out and we looked around but we couldn’t find the old man that insisted on taking my seat anywhere.
Stories like these aren’t rare but I didn’t believe them. We all know the man sat in my seat and we all saw him. But he was nowhere to be found.
Edit: he just vanished. No blood. He was wearing ethnic attire which isn’t peculiar around that area. He didn’t speak at all, and we didn’t ask him anything either. He just said to drop him off at the market ahead which would be in the town my house was in.
One thing that was weird was that he spoke in an oldish Bengali. Like a “old Bengali” that we’d see in poetry from the 1800s. I didn’t see it as peculiar cuz he seemed like an ascetic.
Second edit: I have pics of the collision if you guys were wondering.
Third edit: when I said he didn’t speak at all I meant during the ride, he didn’t say anything other than where he wanted to go and insisting on my seat.
15. No, Thank You
This didn't happen to me, but a very nice old man and his wife used to live a few streets over from us. Well she got very sick and his son flew in to help watch and care for her. A few weeks later she moved to hospice and later died. The night she died her husband and son drive home and they were talking about what to do for the funeral and the husband asked, "Do you think she'd want (some person) to attend" and they both said they heard the dead mom/wife in the back seat say, "No thank you"
16. Message from the Afterlife
My siblings and I all had the same dream on the same night a year ago. It was exactly one year after my mum died and we all had a dream about her and she was in the same place and was speaking to us. She reassured us that she was ok and she was with her mum and my dead siblings and that her dad is in the bad place.
The next day we all realised we had the same dream, we even all independently drew a picture of the place we saw her and wrote down the name of the place it resembled. Most of my siblings took that as an actual message from my mum but my youngest sister and I like to believe that we have all developed some freaky hive mind low level telepathy lol.
Fa Barboza
17. Let's Stay Together, Honey
The only way I can explain this one is "wishful thinking."
My mom and dad were co-dependent, and they liked it that way. They didn't want other people (other than the kids). They were completely happy to be just wrapped up in each other. My dad died the day before his birthday in a hospice centre. Afterwards, it was like he was still home. His touch lamp beside his recliner would go on by itself. The recliner would rock like someone was getting in it. And sometimes, my mom or my sister would hear my dad saying, "Honey, fix me a cold drink?" That was exactly how he'd ask my mom to fill up his massive mug with Sprite over ice.
My mother died less than a year and a half later. After my mother died, there was never another sign of either of them being there. They've been gone now for close to 14 years now.
Saeed Aljarwi
18. Green Light Stop
I have many, but here's the first that popped in my head. I was driving home from work after picking up my baby late at night. Not many cars around out on the country roads. The one stoplight out there was red for me so I stop. It turns green and have a sudden voice or thought or whatever in my head saying don't go yet!
Nothing is coming...I'm still sitting at the green light. Right as I let off the brake, a semi comes flying through his red light. I was shook.
Bored Panda
19. How Time Flies
Me and my friend were walking back home after college, along the same route I always took every day. It was a 20 minute walk, some of which was a country lane. I left college with my friend at 4pm and we walked to my home. We never stopped or detoured. Somehow we arrived to mine at 7pm. Something like 2 hours and 40 minutes just disappeared like that.
We've never been able to explain what happened.
George Hiles
20. The Silly Laugh Lives On
My son (now 10) was 4 and was able to name my Grandmother, by name, by a picture of her when she was in her 20's that was in storage that my mom and I were going through. She died before my wife and I even met. He said she was the lady who taught him how to do his "silly laugh".
Context: his "silly laugh" as we called it was a laugh that sounded just like my Grandmother's. The reason it was so specific and "silly" was that my Grandmother had a brain aneurism when my mom was in her teens. It paralyzed the left of her body (including vocal cords and lips) and gave her a very distinct and odd sounding laugh.
- ibs2pid
Laura Fuhrman
21. Ghostly Companion
My great-grandmother died when I was 5. About 12 years later, I was visiting her house, where my great-aunt still lived. I went to fetch a jersey from a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. The wardrobe had a mirror on the door. Opened the door, took the jersey out and closed the door. I saw my great-grandmother's reflection standing next to mine in the mirror. I turned to check if she was really there, and she was. My great-aunt wasn't surprised; apparently she had seen her mother's spirit too.
22. Brother Doppelganger
I live in a city and my brother lives in another city that is around 1000 km away. He visits sometimes but not quite often. On an average of once every 2 years. One day around 7 yrs ago i was sleeping on the couch in the living room at my apartment. I woke up suddenly on my brother sitting just beside me and i was shocked/surprised started greeting him and asking him about how is he doing and what pleasant surprise it was. Next thing I realise that this was a dream as the door bell was ringing which woke me. Went to open the door and guess what? It was my brother who came to surprise us! This literally had me speechless. Don't have any explanation and I think sometimes you don't need to have one.
23. Phone Mischief
My buddy and I were playing tennis one night at some courts by my house. Lights usually went out at 11, but for whatever reason that night they went off at a weird time, like 10:43. Whatever, that was weird, we collected our stuff and started walking to my car about 500 feet from the courts. My buddy’s mom pulls up right as we’re getting to my car and goes, “Where the hell have you been? I called your cell and some guy was just laughing, it didn’t sound like you." It was then my buddy realized he didn’t have his phone on him. He told his mom to call his cell again and we could see it light up in the middle of the court we were playing on (by the net, but still definitely in between the single lines, not at all where we kept the rest of our stuff). He goes and gets it and only has the one missed call from his mom, the one she just made. He asked if she called the right number and her call log showed 3 calls to his phone all that night. We can’t explain why the cell was on the court or what happened with the calls or what happened with the lights. It was surreal.
24. Prophetic First Borns
All of the first born women on my mother's side of the family have repeated prophetic dreams that give us crippling vertigo and deja vu shortly before they come true in real life. This has been going on forever as far as I can tell as my great grandmother remembers everyone being affected by this all the way back to her great grandmother at least. About a month before my grandfather died last October me my mother my grandmother and my great grandmother all had premonitions about the event all relating to the places where we were when we learned of his death. In my time this ability has also predicted my aunt being pregnant a full month before she informed anyone and the murder of a close family friend.
Jeff Golenski
25. The One with the Deja Vu
I had a dream at age 9 where I was walking through an alleyway with another boy (who I didn't know at the time) having a conversation about school grades or something. 2 years later I meet this boy, and turns out he's a friend of my brother who's a year older than me, but it still didn't hit me yet that he was the one I was walking with in my dream. Another 3 years pass, we are now in highschool, and all 3 of us are walking through the usual alleyway that we passed through to get home, then a conversation about school grades pop up and I get hit with the biggest realization and feeling of deja vu ever. I was reliving the dream that occurred 5 years prior and my memory of that dream became very vivid at that moment. They thought I was a mf Wizard predicting what they were gonna say a second before they speak. This happened 8 months ago, it was great.
- Seukun
FilterGrade
26. Psychic Nudge
When I was 12 I woke up with a start at 2:30 in the morning. I wasn't dreaming and didn't know why I woke up.
My parents told me the next morning that my grandfather had had a heart attack and went for emergency surgery. He died at 2:30 in the morning.
27. The Funny Man
So I was too young to remember this first hand and we moved to a new house a month before I turned 2 years old to give you an idea of how young, but my parents told me that when we lived in our first house I would absolutely not go into my bedroom. I would put my hands and feet across the doorframe and scream bloody murder and no matter how hard my parents tried they could not get me into that room. One time my parents must have managed to actually get me in there, and I was crying my eyes out, my mum asks me what the matter was and apparently I just pointed to the corner and said, "Funny man. Funny man in the corner." My parents let me stay in their room after that apparently.
Filippa Kiefer
28. A Lesson on Premonitions
Had a premonition I'd be involved in a car accident one morning on the way to work as I got out of bed. It was a very strange thought and I considered taking an alternate route but did not. As I got onto the highway it was raining and a car flew past me, hydroplaned, and slammed into my car.
- ZeeLiDoX
29. Alien Lights
I was home alone in high school. It looked like car headlights where shining through our kitchen door which didn’t make sense because it was next to a field. I looked out the kitchen door and the lights were coming from about 50 feet off the ground. It was a row of 3 white lights and 1 red light. I opened the door and there was complete silence and the whole field was lit up. I closed the door quickly, turned around and it was gone.
Bored Panda
30. Off with That Mask
I had a sort of demonic mask on my shelf, and one day while I was working at my desk no more than four feet away from it, it just flew off the shelf and shattered on the floor.
It didn't just fall off the shelf, it was like someone threw it across the room.
The baffling part to me is that I am the one who made the mask. So I know it's not cursed by some voodoo hex or something.
Which of the experiences mentioned resonate with you? These stories, though coming from different people, underline the existence of the uncanny and the strange.
There simply are some things that defy logical explanation, and it's okay to file them away as they are in the attic of your mind, as what some did in order to move on. Do share this piece and spark your own round of supernatural conversations with friends and family!
