A creepy forest

25 Seriously Creepy Things That Happened To People Exactly Like You

These stories from Ask Reddit will make you second guess everything you see today.

A creepy forest
Unsplash / Alex Iby

1. We saw the ghost of a little girl on the overhang outside 

“When I was 8 we moved into this house that seemed like it had been constructed in the early-mid 1900s, it was pretty run down. We heard footsteps all the time, my mom claimed to have seen some animal with red eyes in the cellar that was unconnected but under the house. There was this little cubby with a loveseat and some drawers and cabinets that we found out were just stuffed with obituaries going back decades. My sister woke us up one night saying that she saw a little girl on the overhang outside of our room. We shared a bunk bed upstairs and every night we would shut this little closet and every morning it would be open. We tried moving our toy chest in front of it and that night we were woken up at 3 or 4 am by a loud crash and our toy chest tipped over with the closet door open. We would also hear footsteps on the stairs late into the evening. I’ve lived in 7 houses in my life and I’ve never seen a ghost but that place felt haunted and it is the singular experience that keeps me from dismissing the paranormal.” — ChildOfTheSoul

2. Every single cabinet was thrown open in rage

“My little brother had a psychotic episode after taking acid and staying up for multiple days. He ended up being admitted to a mental institution for a week or so and it was really traumatic for my mom but I believed he would make it out the other side okay. We went to pick him up, took him home, my mom went to bed but he was still acting very ‘off’.

Knowing him better than anyone else, I stayed up late with him to hear him out, trying my best to understand. He said something was following him… like a dark spirit of some kind. He was explaining it to me in the living room when my dog, who is usually extremely mild mannered and always passed the fuck out, all of a sudden starts growling in my brothers direction. My brother just calmly looked at me and said, ‘They’re here.’ I felt the coldest sensation shooting up in my spine and literally ran out of the room. I passed the kitchen and screamed because every. single. fucking. cabinet. was open all at the same angle. Probably 12 cabinet doors total, top and bottom, all opened, same angle. I was 23 at the time and ran into my mom’s room, got in bed with her, cried myself to sleep more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life. There’s absolutely no way my brother or mom could have done this without me noticing. Still get chills thinking about it.” — tacobuenofreak

3. We saw a figure of a girl with her face covered by hair

“My sister and I shared a bed in my room when she came home for vacation. My bed is up against the wall and I took the space on the bed next to the wall. In the middle of the night I wake up and see this figure of the girl with her face covered by her hair standing in front of my sister; her arms were out, almost as if wanting to touch my sister. I sat up and stared at it for a second, thinking well it could be my niece but my niece is blonde. I blinked she was gone. It was then I noticed that my door was slightly ajar which is weird because I have a thing about keeping my door always closed.” — hshshskfffdl

4. I saw a figure on the side of the road with a blank face

“This happened maybe 2 years ago. It was Fourth of July night, my fiancé and I had gone out with some friends to a small country town for their fireworks show. On the way back home, we were driving down country roads. It was dark and a little creepy being surrounded by cornfields. I should note that this general area is about a few blocks away from a well known haunted cemetery. Anyway, as we were driving down the road I notice out of the corner of my eye this figure on the side of the road. I only saw it for a split second but it sent chills through me. It has to have been at least 7 feet tall – lanky with these long slender arms and long legs and the face was similar to the nurses from silent hill, just totally warped but no distinguishable features. Just a blank face. I just sat for a few moments in the car silently. I finally said something to my fiancé kind of shrugging it off. ‘That was weird, I thought I saw something back there.’

‘The thing without the face? I saw it too.’

And that tops my scariest feeling so far. I still get chills thinking about it.” — toast0000

5. My grandmother saw an imaginary girl sitting beside me

“I was at home FaceTiming my cousin once when she passed the phone to my grandma. That’s when my grandma asked, ‘Who’s that girl sitting beside you? Is it ____, tell them I say hello’. I was home alone and scared shitless that I just left the house. She sill thinks I had a friend over and was just refusing to say hello for her.” — cgzala

6. We saw a mysterious figure standing in the doorway 

“Sleeping near the dining room in my house with a friend a couple years ago (We have a small room at the back of it with a few couches). First off I should explain the layout of the rooms involved. The hallway leads into the lounge, which leads into the dining room, which leads into another room that leads outside.

We were talking until around 4am when he asks me who the person standing in the doorway to the dining room was. We both see a figure standing there and remain quiet until he leaves, but both feel extremely uneasy and decide to go to my room to sleep instead.

When going through the lounge I realized that the lounge door had not opened or shut as we would have heard it, and there was nobody in the room.

I’ve experienced some paranormal stuff in my house before, and I was generally quite okay with it as it never came across as threatening, our family accepted that we just ‘share’ the house with them. But the idea of someone/something watching me in my sleep? That scared the shit out of me.” — papachang

7. Our items teleported between each other

“My friends and I have things teleport between us all the time. Once my friends pocket knife went missing. He tells me that this morning his boss said she found it and put it in a drawer for him. When she went go get it, it wasn’t there so she assumed a coworker stole it. Meanwhile, I found it in a bookbag that I keep in my car right after he tells me that. We’ve just accepted that our possessions are teleporting and if we don’t look too hard they’ll end up back with us somehow.” — racehill

8. We saw a tall, gray ‘thing’ in the shape of a man  

“One night I was over at a friends house in the middle of summer, and we decided to go outside. We were just walking around talking about random stuff when both glanced over towards the front of his house, when we saw a tall gray ‘thing’. It had arms, legs and head which was sticking up over a van on the side of his house. It was walking towards the house and went behind a wall.

We quickly looked at each other and just stared for a second both confused. We walk over where we saw it to investigate what the hell we just saw. We didn’t see anything but we did see his mom next to the door that leads inside the house (She has sever schizophrenia and is always talking to other “people” I should add) so he asks her if she saw anything, and she went from slightly dancing and singing to herself to a super serious face. She yells, ‘Yeah it was the tall gray man’ and started laughing hysterically probably thinking she imagined it.

I’m still on the fence about whether it was a ghost or if two sane people and a not sane person imagined the same thing…” — dominthecruc

9. Somehow, we lost a large chunk of time

“Not sure about this one, but here goes.

This was c. 2002. I was about 8. Me, my dad, and step mom at the time were on our way from California to Tennessee by plane. Once we landed, we got out of the plane and waited for my dad to turn on his phone to call my aunt who was waiting for us at the airport. We wait a couple of minutes and my dad has a ton of missed calls from my aunt freaking out about where we were. He called her back and she’s asking us where we’ve been & that they’ve been waiting for 2 and a half hours. We were pretty confused because our flight got there in a normal amount of time without delays, but we somehow lost 2 and a half hours of our time (time change from CA to TN aside).

Once we met up with them down at baggage, our carousel was completely empty of luggage and other passengers. We had to go pick up our baggage somewhere because they had been unclaimed for too long.

Still don’t know what happened or how we lost this much time. Felt very weird and surreal for the rest of the night.” — neosimmel

10. We lived in a haunted house where objects would move right in front of us

“We lived in an old (early 1900s) farmhouse a few years ago. A friend that had lived there previously told us it was haunted but we thought he was just trying to scare me.

Our toddler son began having nightmares/night terrors. We would hear him screaming and crying and he would be asleep sitting up in bed. He also started to sleepwalk, even making it to the front porch once. That house was the only place he ever did any of this.

Once my husband was burning garbage late at night and I went to bed. I heard the front door open and close and footsteps to the living room. About an hour later I heard it again, but this time my husband came into the bedroom. I asked why he went back outside before and he said he had been in the backyard the entire time.

Things would move on their own right in front of us. We had one of those doorframe jumpers for our infant daughter and it would start swinging wildly in erratic patterns. The final straw was when my husband and I were standing in the living room talking and a phone picked itself up off the desk and threw itself at us. We moved soon after.” — winochocoholic 

11. A man used the fire escape… which led nowhere

“I used to work in a cinema while at uni. I was opening up one day and walked into screen 8 (the biggest, and right at the end of the row of auditoria). There was a chap in a hi vis vest standing down at the fire exit, propping it open and staring down the fire escape hallway.

There was renovation work going on in the building so I assumed he was with them. I called out to him to ask him if he needed help, which fell on deaf ears. I walked down towards him, a bit pissed off he’d ignored me, and as I got about halfway there he walked out of the fire exit and let it slam behind him.

I got to the fire exit maybe four seconds later and pushed the bar to open it.

Two things happened.

Firstly, I was gazing down the length of the 100ish metre long fire escape tunnel, completely empty.

Secondly, on opening the fire exit, I set the fire alarm off.

This happened probably 20 years ago. I still don’t have a sensible explanation for what it was…” — GypsysTrampsandSteve

12. When I was only a child, I felt an unseen person push me 

“I was a kid, probably 10 at the most. I remember leaning over the bathtub while cleaning or something, I swear to this day, something pushed me. I was the only person downstairs, nothing else out of the ordinary happened besides that. But something gave me a slight push on my back- not hard enough to make me fall or cause me injury. But I swear to god it happened; this is my story and I’m fucking sticking to it. It freaks me out to this day.” — verydepressedwalnut

13. We saw a bizarre flash in the early morning sky

“It was early in the morning, sometime around sunrise. A friend and I were walking after a long night of drinking. For a flash of a moment everything went green. She saw it too. I also feel like things went silent. My best guess is that it was a solar green flash, but it seemed a little x-files weird.” — saucypancake

14. There is an exact lookalike of me in town, down to my tattoos

“I have paranormal stories sure , but this one always made me feel so weird.

I know a lot of people have a ‘twin.’ Someone you get mistaken for or a situation where someone swears they saw you somewhere you definitely weren’t. Mine happens a little too often and in a town that isn’t very big. I get asked all the time things like, “ Aren’t you in my class in (whatever college I’ve never been in) ?” and similar occasions.

But the worst one was when a good friend told me he saw me at a gas station. He ever waved and I waved back ! That wouldn’t be too odd except I have many visible tattoos. Chest,back and arms. Guess what this chick had identical?

So I have a creepy doppelgänger or another girl is running around with my face and exact tattoos. I’m not sure which is more unsettling.” — Missat0micb0mbs

15. We watched a man disappear into thin air

“Was staying at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, one of the oldest hotels in Texas. Teddy Roosevelt had gone to its bar to gather people for the rough riders. It’s purportedly haunted. Anyway, I don’t believe in ghosts. My friend and I went to a spurs game and then come back after a night of drinking. We passed a guy in the hall who was wearing an old-time suit. He said ‘good evening’ and then fucking disappeared into thin air. My friend and I both saw him and heard him. Neither of us could sleep despite being drunk and exhausted.” — Gets_overly_excited

16. We saw my deceased grandfather sitting inside our living room

“Grandpa died overnight in hospital when I was a kid – really difficult loss for us. Walked halfway down the stairs at home the morning after with my parents, and there he was sitting down watching TV in the living room. He heard us, turned around and stared at us for a quick moment, then just vanished.

All three of us saw it.” — _shapingus_

17. We saw a mysterious figure at the edge of the bed

“I was staying the night with a girl friend and I felt fear come over me and I saw this black figure at the bottom of my the bed. Like a shadow. The worse part is she was looking at it too with this scared look on her face and she pulled her legs up the bed to keep her feet away from the bottom and she held my hand really tight. I honestly have no idea what the fuck was going on but it was definitely the creepiest thing.” — Ditred01

18. Random items flew off the shelves inside of my home 

“I once had a clock fly off the wall next to me. The clock had been there for years and the nail was still in the wall. It was using a keyhole hanger so the only way to get it off would have been to lift it up and off the nail. It landed a distance away and with force. I even tried replicating it by just letting the clock fall off on its own and there’s no way it landed where it did without a force being applied to it. I still think about it from time to time and can’t come up with an explanation of how it happened.

I also had an RC car controller fly off a shelf in my bedroom in the middle of the night. Woke up in the morning and saw it on the ground. Asked my mom if she was in my room and she wasn’t. There was a layer of dust on the controller as I hadn’t used it in awhile and the dust was completely undisturbed. Not sure how it moved without someone touching it but it sure felt like something tried throwing at me while I was sleeping. That house still creeps me out when I come visit my parents.” — Feodar_protar 

19. A human shape stood outside my window

“Perhaps not as paranormal as the others, but — a year or two back, I was sitting in my living room on a snowy night. The ground outside was covered by a good few inches of snow. I was sitting in the dark on my laptop and I happened to glance up at the window. There was a human shape standing there, seemingly looking in. As soon as I looked up at it, it dashed out of view and ran around the side of the house. I rushed over to the window to try to follow its progress, but it had already disappeared. The weird part? I looked at the area where it would have been standing and the snow was totally undisturbed — no animal tracks or footprints. I decided not to go looking for it. I wrote it off as a trick of my eyes (and nothing else happened that night), but the movement of whatever it was seemed too human to be just my imagination.” — Abs_of_steel

20. My dog started growling at an unseen presence 

“Was hanging out watching tv with my dog alone one day when I was younger, at some point she looks up and starts growling towards the closet randomly. She had never done that before so I, half jokingly, said something along the lines of ‘go away’ thinking she might be seeing a ghost and she suddenly stops. I then proceed to say ‘that’s right you better’ and she started growling again but more intensely.

I got very scared and said ‘sorry I didn’t mean it’ and she immediately stopped again. I did not try to provoke whatever she saw again.

I still think about it to this day years later and it was one of the scariest moments I have ever experienced.” — nomodango

21. A person transported in front of my very eyes 

“In middle school as I climbed up the stairs to head to the library I passed by a classmate going down. When I got to the library, there she was.” — guto8797

22. I heard a laugh coming from inside of my completely empty room 

“I was on the computer last week and I heard a laugh coming from inside my room. The windows were closed, no one was home, and the laugh seemed to be coming from inside the computer. Volume was muted and nothing was open except my Word document. Really creepy.” — quirklessloser

23. A nonexistent voice warned me right before glass was thrown in my direction

“I’m sure I’ve told this story before but it’s one that will always stay with me and I have no explanation for it but paranormal so, here goes…

I was about 13 years old when this happened and home alone. Mum was out with my siblings and Dad was working FIFO so I was definitely alone. I had a pet cat called Misty who I loved dearly. She was the sweetest animal I’d ever known and could never have dreamt of harming a hair on her fuzzy grey head. So, this particular day I was sitting on our front porch giving Misty a brush, just enjoying the sunshine, when out of nowhere I heard a males voice in my left ear quite calmly yet urgently say, ‘Throw the cat, go inside.’

I was compelled to obey this command instantly. I threw Misty off our meter high porch towards the front yard and turned to go inside. The second my hand touched the door handle a glass light shade fell and shattered right where she and I had been sitting. Had I not moved I would have been showered in razor sharp 30-40 year old glass shards.

Misty took a while to forgive my brash action towards her but I was grateful for whichever entity was looking out for us that day.

I have other stories from that house but that one stands out the most for me.” — TaterJade

24. I heard someone open my door — but no one was there

“I heard my stepdad walk to my room and then open my door. I looked up to see what he wanted and no one was there. And no walking away steps either.

It was pretty scary cause he was this 6’2 dude and it was pretty obvious if he was walking. We had nothing in the house that could mimic such a thing.” — DaughterEarth

25. My boyfriend and I shared similar (strange) dreams

“This is probably more silly than creepy but it’s definitely unexplained. Years ago, I suddenly started having dreams about meat. Like I’d walk into my apartment and there’d be steaks and roasts just all over the place. Always raw and always choice cuts. I’ve never dreamed about food and although I love a good steak, I prefer to cook it so this was weird.

I started writing down the dreams since they were so odd. Soon I realized that whenever I’d wake up from a meat dream, my dog would be in my bed asleep and touching me. So I started wondering about dream transfer but told myself that was crazy.

Then one day my husband starts telling me he’s having these weird dreams about meat. Says I’m going to think he’s crazy but he thinks our dog’s dreams are getting into his head because he only has them when our 120 lb. dog sleeps in bed with us. My dog was huge so if he was in bed with us he was always touching you, whether he threw himself across both legs or just had a paw on your arm.

He described a few dreams very similar to mine and couldn’t believe it when I showed him the notes I took. This continued for years, for both of us, until my dog stopped sleeping in our bed when he got older. Hasn’t happened since.” — horsecalledwar Thought Catalog Logo Mark