Amanda Ashley

There are some people who believe in the paranormal despite never having had any spooky experiences themselves. Other people are on the fence and don’t truly believe until they experience an unexplainable fright. On Reddit, people are sharing the ghostly encounters that led them to be true believers.

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• 1
They Caught A Glimpse Of Previous Occupant

From Reddit u/coldfishandfeet:

My first home up north had such an eerie vibe. I would always shudder and feel extremely uneasy walking up the stairs. My bathroom was at the top of the stairs, and I remember one morning in broad daylight after I dropped my kids to school, I saw what appeared to be my boyfriend at the time in the bathroom doorway facing in, wearing his usual attire, a black tracksuit. He kind of side-stepped behind the door. There was a mirror behind it, so I thought nothing of it… until I walked a few steps past the bathroom door across the landing, into my bedroom. There was my ex-boyfriend still fast asleep wearing a blue T-shirt. I shook him awake saying I had just seen him. We checked behind the bathroom door, as I was in absolute panic I had an intruder in my home.

The bathroom had a slit of a window, and it was impossible to get out.

When I got friendlier with the neighbours, they told me that the house had been left empty for a couple of years. Because of a couple of deaths in there and no locals wanted to rent it, the previous owner literally drank herself to death in the back bedroom after her husband died. Their son, who was on drugs and deeply troubled, hung himself on the top of the stairs within a few weeks. He was apparently the same height, colouring, and aesthetic as my ex-boyfriend. No matter what he was doing, he also wore a black tracksuit like him, too.

He just didn’t look at all ghost like in any sense. More like an actual human intruder who just disappeared.

What do you think?

Ghostly experience?

• • 2
They Were The Only One That Could See The Mime

From Reddit u/Avocado90266:

It happened to me when I was visiting friends in another state.

They took me to see their friend’s bar/gaming hall (a place for food, drink, and board games, etc. – not gambling). The building was at least 100 years old.

The owner took us to see that he had renovated a back room so he could expand the business. It was a large room with fresh paint, wallpaper, and carpet. We all stood just inside the door of this room, talking.

A young man (no older than 25) came in behind me, dressed in a mime outfit.

It made me think of the 1970s. I thought he worked for the bar/gaming hall. My back was actually close to the wall, so when the young man tried to squeeze behind me (I thought he was trying to avoid interrupting our conversation), I stepped forward, looking back over my shoulder. I said, “Oh, excuse me!”

My friend looked at me and said, “What?”

There was no one behind me. I did not tell anyone about it.

Ghostly experience?

• • 3
Every Faucet In The House Turned On At The Same Time

From Reddit u/cloudbaby69:

My single mom and I lived in a house when I was a teen that used to belong to an older couple who had passed away. My friends and I went in the attic to smoke weed or something and found a bunch of the couple’s old sheet music and instruments. We got spooked a bit later and climbed down.

From that point on, it was truly like a movie – doors opened and closed themselves, there were weird freezing cold rooms, just a strange “feeling”. My mom had recurring dreams of a large, black dog sleeping by her bed. She wouldn’t elaborate, but eventually the dreams became so terrifying she wouldn’t sleep in her bedroom anymore. The dreams stopped when she started sleeping on the couch.

One day, my mom and I were on the couch, talking about the weird occurrences in the house. At that moment, I sh*t y’all not, every faucet in the house turned on at once in the kitchen and both bathrooms. We walked around and turned them off. All the sink levers were physically raised for the tap to turn on – my mom asked her plumber friend about this, and he couldn’t come up with a reason it had happened.

Ghostly experience?

• • 4
They Saw A Ghostly Arm Opening The Bedroom Door

From Reddit u/ForshevaOlesya:

I do believe in ghosts because I truly believe that I had seen one once:

One night I was woken up at around 1 am by a ghostly pale arm and hand slowly pushing open my squeaky bedroom door. The hand was quite high off the ground which was odd because my husband wasn’t home and the only other person in the house was my two-year-old son. I called out to my son but there was no answer.

I got out the bed and left my room only to see that there was no one in the hallway. I switched on the hallway light and noticed smoke coming from my son’s room at the other end of the hallway. I rushed over to his room and saw that he was fast asleep and still neatly tucked in under his blankets. His bed lamp was on as usual, and his bedroom window curtain had somehow ended up inside the bed lamp -which was open at the top – and the curtain had begun to smolder, which was responsible for the smoke. It looked like it was about to catch fire at any moment. I removed the curtain from the bed lamp and potentially saved our home from burning down and my son from getting killed.

I still don’t know whose hand that was that opened my bedroom door. I like to think that it was a guardian angel or a ghost. I told my pastor about this experience, and he warned me that it could be an evil spirit trying to trick me into trusting it.

Ghostly experience?

• • 5
They Could Smell Cigar Smoke And Hear Someone Coughing In Empty Room

From Reddit u/JamiSings:

I believe in them because I’ve seen them.

In the house I grew up in, the former owner had shot himself in the shower after the death of his father who he had spent his entire adult life caring for.

I could be standing in the kitchen and suddenly, there would be a disembodied jean-clad leg wearing a black work boot standing by itself in the middle of the floor. Walking down the hall to my room and there’d be a white figure in the shape of a tall man just standing there. Once walked out into the living room in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom to see a black skull with red, glowing eyes and a big smile floating by the TV. (Old-fashioned cabinet-style TV, by the way. This was the early- to mid-1980s.)

No one in our house smoked, yet sometimes from the bathroom where the man shot himself you could smell cigar smoke and hear someone coughing a smoker’s cough, even when that bathroom was empty. Sometimes the shower door would open and close rapidly until Mom got sick of it one day and shouted, “KNOCK THAT OFF!” and it stopped from that day forth. An unplugged clock radio – that had no place for batteries – suddenly turned itself on and played music for a couple of minutes.

There was also a little, faceless Native American girl that almost everyone in our neighborhood had seen. She liked to peek around corners at people and put her hands up to where her mouth would be as if smothering laughter. You could see everything pretty clearly – her black, braided hair, her hands – but she had no face.

Ghostly experience?

• • 6
They Saw A Screaming Female Apparition

From Reddit u/avatarofgerad:

I had some incidents at my old house here in Japan that turned me into a believer. It’s a bit long, so I’ll give a very short summary for now.

Footsteps upstairs woke me up once. Another time, the front door slammed shut at night and woke me up, I rolled out of bed to confront whoever it was and came face-to-face with a female apparition that screamed at me. I had all my electronics cut out at the same time, and then my backpack started moving across the floor. I came home to my organized shoes being scattered everywhere. There were a lot of times I came home to random doors being locked from the inside, primarily my downstairs bathroom.

Eventually moved and haven’t had anything since then.

Ghostly experience?

• • 7
She Woke Up To A Figure Watching Her Sleeping

From Reddit u/gorfbeef:

Happened sometime over a year ago. I’m 18 female and have a best friend I used to hang out with a lot at the time of occurrence.

It was about 3 am at the time, I was just going to sleep so I put my phone on my nightstand to the left of me. A little after 4 am, as I was just getting to a deeper sleep, I suddenly felt an odd feeling like I needed to open my eyes. I open them and look to the right and see someone sitting next to me with their legs crossed. Nothing seems wrong to me at first until I realize my friend did not come over that night and that is not her next to me. I reach to the left to get my phone to turn the flashlight on but by the time I look back, there was nothing there. I decided to think nothing of it and went back to sleep.

Later into the hour, I have the same feeling so I open my eyes and see the same person crouching by the left back corner of my bed. I immediately turn to get my phone again to see it better but I look back to see nothing.

I oddly only felt fear when I realized I didn’t know who this person was. This is why I believe in ghosts, I saw a grey, blank woman-shaped entity in my room but it somehow made me feel calm. I didn’t feel like I needed to be scared. I definitely would SH*T myself if I saw a random person in my room so this is why it was such an odd experience. This thing did not make me sh*t myself at ALL I was straight-up fine? I will never understand but I’m going to just say ghosts.

Ghostly experience?

• • 8
They Heard Footsteps Running Up And Down The Hallway

From Reddit u/Impossible_Fold5059:

Just remembered that a house we lived in when I was little had a small, boy ghost. He used to run up and down the hallway, and my dad thought it was my brother and me, but we were always asleep. Multiple people heard or saw him. He used to kind of play hide-and-seek on my dad (an unwilling participant). One day, my dad had a chat to him and told him kindly that he was scared and it was okay to leave now. The boy left.

Ghostly experience?

• • 9
They Could Hear Furniture Being Moved Around Upstairs Floor

From Reddit u/CZJayG:

The house I lived in from age nine to 18 was haunted. It was a wood and concrete house on stilts, and the living and dining room floors were wood. There would be times where my friends and I would be hanging in the carport, directly under those rooms, and we would hear chairs being dragged across the floor. No one would be upstairs nor would any furniture be moved. I would always hear pebbles hitting various windows around the house and sometimes I would hear a woman saying something incomprehensible. The scariest incident happened when I was home alone one night. I was watching TV when it suddenly started changing channels on its own before turning off. As soon as it went off, an empty two-liter soda bottle flew off the shelf above it and hit me in the chest. I ran outside and refused to come back until my dad got home.

My friends and I also used to party in the old section of the local cemetery in high school. One night, I was smoking a cigarette next to my friend’s van when I hear footsteps in the leaves in front of me. I look over and clearly see footprints in the leaves walking towards me before disappearing. Saw a few shadow figures around there.

Ghostly experience?

• • 10
The Previous Owner Had Died Falling Down The Stairs

From Reddit u/sleepyseaslug:

I grew up in a haunted house. I definitely believe in ghosts. We moved in there when I was about 10, and I regularly experienced weird things until I moved out at 19. The house was old, around 200 years old. We suspect that a previous owner may have died there by falling down the stairs.

There were small incidents on a regular basis. We’d all often hear footsteps walking in the upstairs hallway when no one was there. Things would go missing and then reappear in other parts on the house, when everyone swore they didn’t move them. Very occasionally, I would see shadows move past my bedroom door and near the stairs.

I don’t think the presence in the house was malicious, but you could feel there was something there, and it was unsettling. The whole family said they noticed strange things. I often got the sense of someone watching me, particularly in the upstairs hallway, on the stairs, and in my bedroom (which was the old master bedroom). It wasn’t uncommon for me to bail out of my room in the night when the feeling got too intense and go sleep on the trundle bed in my sister’s room instead… My mum, at some point after this, went to see a psychic medium. The medium told her that the spirit of old lady came through. She used to live in our house, and she often stood at the top of the stairs, making sure we didn’t fall…

Ghostly experience?

• 11
Everyone Had Unexplained Experiences At Workplace

From Reddit u/lordwreynor:

I went to the shop once after everyone had left to take care of a customer emergency. Went to use the head, and the lavatory faucet was on. Did my business, washed my hands, and left. Came back a while later, and the faucet was on again. I thought I had just left it on, so turned it off. Finished the project an hour later, and the faucet was on again. Freaked me out.

Several months later, we are all eating lunch, and the pallet jack goes rolling by in the shop. Boss mentions the ghost, and we all get to talking about the weird sh*t that happens there. Apparently, everyone that had ever worked there late has experienced some spooky crap. Tools that just freakin’ appear – no one has ever brought in a rivet gun or purchased one, but there was one in the shop toolbox when we needed one.

Just weird sh*t, like the picker being fully charged when no one put it on the charger the night before. Still have never “seen” a ghost, but I believe in them now.

Ghostly experience?

• • 12
Siblings Saw Apparition Of Little Girl In Their Room

From Reddit u/curlyfry217:

I always felt like they existed but I’ve never seen one until a few years back. I was half-asleep on my bed, facing my closet. I was asleep with my arms spread out, and I felt pressure on my arm as if someone was laying on it. I open my eyes and see a young girl like five to seven years old dressed in 1900s dress.

She gets up and runs away laughing and disappearing in my closet. I thought it was a result from still being sleepy but my sister said she saw the little girl in the reflection of her mirror in my doorway. I haven’t seen the little girl since.

Ghostly experience?

• • 13
Room Full Of Friends Saw Door Open By Itself And Heard Footsteps

From Reddit u/Mayfl21:

Many years ago on a warm summer evening, my friends and I (23-year-old female) got together at one friend’s house to cook dinner, chat, and play games. It got really late – it must have been around 1 am – and we were sitting in the sunroom chatting away, when one of the girls suggested to talk about spooky stories. I was always skeptical about ghosts and didn’t have anything to add to the conversation but my friends seemed to enjoy the adrenaline rush.

They all had stories about ghosts, monsters, or murderers but just when you thought it was too scary to stand, there would be a giggle. All of a sudden, the room went quiet, and I noticed the sheer terror on my friend’s face.

I looked behind me, and the door from the living room to the sunroom slowly opened then closed followed by footsteps across the room. Footsteps stopped, and in front of me, the door from the sunroom to the garden slowly opened and closed… We sat there in complete silence. Soon after, we packed up and went home. We haven’t talked about it ever since… I can’t find a logical explanation to any of this, as all the windows and doors were shut, there were no other people in the house, and there was no wind outside – just a warm, peaceful summer evening.

Ghostly experience?

• • 14
They Both Witnessed A Dark Wispy Figure

From Reddit u/I-Saw-A-DangStranger:

Total skeptic and an atheist, but also very spiritually inclined as a somewhat-recent development.

Years ago (‘08 or ‘09), I was driving home with my then-girlfriend along a back country road. I took a left on a Y intersection and started to come over a shallow hill. Something crossed from the left side of the road to the right side of the road, and it took a total of two seconds of time to cross. It was a black shape about four to five feet long and two feet tall. Separated from the ground by about a foot of air. It was nearly opaque and black, smoky and solid (not a puff of smoke being swept by the wind). The entire perimeter of this figure was lined with swirling wispy smoky “tentacles”.

The first split second, I thought it was a panther because of the long dark and low profile but it became obvious in the NEXT split second it was not. It hit the shallow empty ditch on the right shoulder of the road and dissipated. There was no tall grass to disappear into. After about five seconds of stunned silence, I asked my girlfriend if she saw it. She said she didn’t want to talk about it and NEVER wanted to address it again. This thing almost looked cliche “evil” or creepy or bad.

There is an old cemetery and the foundation of a burned-down church from the direction this figure came from about 100 yards away down a road with several houses.

Crazy thing is, I saw this back in ’08 or ’09. I saw the SAME thing just about two months ago in the same spot. After all that time. I literally yelled, “Motherf*cker,” when that happened.

I don’t know if it was a ghost or some type of supernatural nonhuman creature…

Ghostly experience?

• • 15
They Heard Slow Footsteps Walking Around Their Room

From Reddit u/otterpaws27:

I’ve never seen one. I’ve only heard it. It was, hands down, the most terrifying thing I have ever encountered. It’s the reason I no longer meditate at night.

I cannot explain what happened. I was sitting in my aligned pose on my bed in the dark just before I was going to sleep that night. Clearing my head of all negative thoughts and just calming myself. That was, until I heard footsteps. Footsteps that belonged to no one. I know this because it’s late, everybody is asleep, and there’s nobody else in the room. Footsteps that I could hear walk towards me. They were so f*cking slow, too. You know how when someone is walking around the same room as you and you can feel the air displacement as they pass you? Yeah. That. I felt it come two feet from my face, and I heard it just stop there. All while my eyes were closed, mind you. I sat there, waiting to see if they’d do something. Anything.

Nope. I couldn’t take it anymore. I braced myself to see something standing directly in front of me. I opened my eyes, and the room was completely empty. By then, my heart was pounding so fast.

I wanted to just leave my house and go stay somewhere else that night. I didn’t want to deal with that. Yet, I’m still here. Ever since I had that encounter, I’ve been hearing occasional disembodied voices. Sometimes they actually startle me. Some people have told me I’m hearing astral voices, but ultimately I have no clue.

Ghostly experience?

• • 16
They Saw A Floating Human Shape On The Side Of The Road

From a Redditor:

My buddy and I “clipped” a supernatural human shape while driving.

Driving approximately 50 miles per hour on a backroad at night. I was riding shotgun. Ahead, I spot an object on the side of the driver’s side of road. My first thought was deer. (I had great eyesight and a penchant for deer spotting.) It then appeared to be more of a human shape. As we neared, it quickly moved toward the driver’s side, almost floating, but at high speed. I braced for impact, expecting it to hit the driver’s side mirror. No sound.

We both saw it. I saw a face outline. Looked like a cowboy of some kind. Had a blue hue.

Somehow, it wasn’t that scary. Just bizarre. That is my ghost story.

Ghostly experience?

• • 17
They Saw Books Getting Thrown And Heard Whispers

From Reddit u/PhantomDomain:

I lived in a haunted trailer. I did not have a good experience there. The place almost caught fire in the middle of the night, the entire thing moved while we were all in the middle of it, we heard whispers, things that weren’t there touched us, we saw books get thrown, etc.

It wasn’t a good experience but I’m sure others have been through worse. I was young at the time, so it was terrifying for me.

Ghostly experience?

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