Happy Halloween: People From Around The World Share Spooky True Stories

Happy Halloween: People From Around The World Share Spooky True Stories


Happy Halloween: People From Around The World Share Spooky True Stories


With Halloween just around the corner, there's no better time to turn the lights off and spook yourself with some seriously scary stories. Some are supernatural, some are very natural indeed; some are unexplained, others are completely logical. But we hope they'll all give you a little thrill as we prepare to celebrate the creepiest night of the year.

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31. Gone Like The Wind

My parents disappeared for 10 years. In the middle of the night, my dad woke me up and told me to hide in the bathroom. In the morning the house was empty, and my parents vanished. No one could find them. 10 years passed and I lived in agony over what happened that night. On my 21st birthday, a woman knocked on my door. She held a picture of a man and said “Is this YOUR FATHER?” I looked closer and it was him, 10 years older. She rushed inside, locked the door, and said “It’s time for the truth!” I didn’t know what was happening. Then she started explaining how they left me because they didn’t want me to be a part of their family. I asked her who she is and how does she know all this stuff. She told me she was my grandmother and that I’ve been hidden from the rest of their family.

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30. How to terrify your children without really trying

I was with my little brother home alone when we suddenly heard a creepy voice from the other room saying, "Come here. I want to talk to you." We didn't know who or what it was and immediately ran upstairs.

While we were running to our room, we heard someone nearby say, "Do you boys think you can run from me? I see everything!" At this point we were terrified, locking the door to our room, grabbing our mini baseball bats and crying. We were certain we were going to be killed or eaten by some monster.

Then, it happened: a loud bang came from the closet and the monster sprang out. We both screamed, my brother fell, and I threw the bat at... my dad wearing an IT clown mask and laughing hysterically.

Turns out he was behind the whole thing. First, he had put all the cordless phones in the house on speaker and said he was leaving to run some errands. Then, he proceeded to sneak back into the house, hide in our closet, and scare us.

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29. How touching

My friend died in a car accident and they towed the car pretty early in the day. We were teens so we thought we should go collect all her things that were ejected from the car when she hit the tree.

After about a half hour, I was overwhelmed and just sat down and started crying. I had my two friends with me cleaning stuff up, and they just let me get it out for a bit.

Someone started rubbing my shoulders in the deepest massage I have ever had, and it was really helping me get control of myself and relaxing me. I let them rub for a few minutes and then I put my hand on theirs to let them know I was appreciative.

There was no hand, just my shoulder. I turned around to say thank you to whoever it was, and there was nobody. I looked up at the car and my two friends were standing there talking about something.

SOMETHING had been TOUCHING me!!

I ran to the car and asked my friends if it was them. They looked at me like I was crazy. I made everyone get in the car super fast and we left.

I think a spirit was comforting me in my loss, and I am grateful and freaked out for it. I can still remember how it felt, and it's been 22 years.

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28. A very Canadian ghost

When I was a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night to my bed shaking. Normally that would scare the crap out of me, but instead I was just kind of annoyed. I rolled over and muttered, "Stop it."

The shaking stopped immediately. Then a male voice speaks right beside me, saying, "Sorry." That's when I freaked out. I'm pretty sure my childhood house was haunted.

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27. "That's when she began to get suspicious..."

This didn't happen to me, but to my sister.

She and her husband had just had their first child a few months prior. My brother-in-law was working the graveyard shift at his job as my sister stayed home taking care of my nephew. Around 2am, she heard loud knocking on her back door.

She went to go check it out and saw a lady banging on the door asking for my sister to let her in. The lady told my sister that her husband had just beat her down the street and was looking for her. My sister was hesitant to let her in since she had a newborn in the house and didn't want to interfere. She told the lady that the best she could do was call the police for her. The lady told my sister to not call the police and to let her in.

This is where my sister got suspicious. She went to get her phone and called 911. When she went back to the door, the lady was gone. The police arrived a few minutes later and they told my sister that the same situation happened a few streets down. Apparently the couple would do this act to get into people's homes.

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26. Another glitch in the Matrix

On a way to a camping trip, I passed by an old, painted up car with decorations of muppets and stuff on it. Obviously owned by a crazy person who couldn't drive over 50mph.

Without stopping, we passed the same car 40 minutes later.

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25. Babysitter saved your life

I'm not sure how freaky it is, since it's not paranormal or anything, but when I was about 7 years old I went on a walk with my babysitter. We were walking back a mile or so to my house on a fairly busy road and about half way there she says we should play Simon Says.

At first we walk faster, then skip, and then jog lightly. Then she says "Simon says run as fast as you can. Simon says turn here." I was slightly confused, but played along. As we turned down the driveway I looked back and saw two guys chasing after us, one with a bat and the other with a knife.

We ran up to a house and some old people living there let us in thankfully. At the time I didn't grasp how messed up it was that we were getting chased and I still have no clue why they were.

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24. "You're lucky I'm scared too"

Was sitting in my room at like 11:30 pm, heard lots of noise downstairs, assumed it was my mum. Heard her walk up the stairs to my room, stop, I called out to her, she didn't say anything and walked downstairs.

I went down about a half hour later to find a piece of paper with the words "You're lucky I'm scared too" on it, and a whole bunch of stuff was missing. Called mum, she still hadn't arrived home from a dinner she was at with her friends. I called the cops and locked myself in the bathroom, but I think the invader left when they realized I was still home. Probably the most scared I've ever been when I was hiding in the bathroom.

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23. Elevator to the unknown

On my previous job when our building was still under construction, the only floors that were occupied were the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th and 7th. One time I was alone inside the elevator going from 1st to the 6th floor when suddenly it stopped and opened on the 3rd floor. Normally I would just disregard it but rumors where all over that a ghost child was playing around on the vacant floors. So I pressed the closed button as I fast as I could. When it closed I heard noises like someone was tapping their fingers on the walls of elevator.

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22. Long live the king

Every time I have watched The Lion King someone I know has died.

Happened 3 times when I was a child. Always happened the same way. We'd be watching it as a family, and then the phone would ring during the movie and we would receive the news of a relative dying.

No one in my family has watched The Lion King since. (Around 15 years?)

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21. "You always make me happy"

When I was around 16, my rapidly growing family finally moved from the house I had spent my entire life in. As you would expect, we spent a lot of time fondly remembering things we used to do in the house as we were packing everything up. At some point I decided to go into the downstairs closet with a flashlight and read, something I used to do when I was younger to get some peace and quiet.

Now, this is one of those deep closets that goes under the stairs; it went back around 8 feet and then had a left turn into a very low maybe 3 foot high space. This space was largely occupied by a mountain of old blankets and stuffed animals. Of course, this is the most fluffy spot to sit and read.

About an hour in I shift a little to get comfortable and I hear a low, slow, warped, hoarse voice say, "You always make me happy." I flipped out, hit my head on the low ceiling, and practically broke the door down getting out.

After hyperventilating and explaining to my family why there was no color left on my face I went back to see what it was. It was my stuffed Little Bear from when I was 3 or 4 years old that I happened to lean on juuuuust right to press his belly. When I pressed his stomach again though, nothing. This poor bear I hadn't played with since I was a toddler used the last of its power, used it's dying breath to tell me I made it happy.

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20. Good things grow with love

I was visiting my hometown and decided to pick up my old high school friend from his house and take him to dinner and a drink to catch up. He is kinda stressed and tells me that his ex, with whom he had broken up with over 2 years prior, has been stalking him and harassing him.

I drive him home afterwards, and it starts to drizzle. As I drop him off at his house (the neighborhood was dark and quiet by now), we both notice a bag tied to my side view mirror...it was likely attached when we were at the restaurant. We open it to see a poorly taken photo of a tree taken at night with flash. There was a brief letter, obviously written from his ex, that said: "I buried our first love letter under this tree years ago. This tree is growing from our love."

I made sure my friend got into his house all right and got the heck out of there.

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19. Home alone with an angry ghost

We rented a house that never felt like home. You always felt creeped out walking in there like you were being watched. My bf and our roommate both worked nights so I would be there by myself a lot.

One night I was doing my usual stuff and watching some TV before bed. I had this overwhelming feeling all night that I should avoid the hallway and not look directly down it, it was creepy. The feeling of being watched and terrified lasted or about 2 hours before I decided to suck it up and make my way to my room. I left the hallway lights on and went to bed. Just as I turned of the side table light I heard a drawer being pulled out and hitting the stopper. I turned on the light and nothing was out of place. This went on about 6 times before I decided I was sleeping with the light on. I curled up under the covers and waited for the bf to get home.

He comes rolling in about 3am. He's laughing at me for being such a wimp gets into bed and turned the light off and that's when it happened. All the doors down the hallway slammed shut 1 by 1 then our closet doors started rattling. The sound coming from inside could only be described at total destruction, it sounded like the shelves the pole and everything in there was being tossed around.

The bf joined me under the covers and we were both terrified. After it stopped it took 5-10 min to convince him to go check around the house. Nothing was out of place and our roommate had drove 3 hours back home that night to be with his family so we knew it wasn't him. We slept with the light on the rest of the night and moved out soon after. I still can't drive by that house without being creeped out.

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18. The walls will shake

I was sitting in our office room home alone when I was 19. I was typing a paper for one of my college classes. The office room used to be my sisters room before she moved out, so a lot of her decorations are still there.

She had a photo of a mountain range, an oval shaped mirror, and three different hangings that read "faith", "hope", and "love". This makes 5 total things hanging on the wall in the room.

Suddenly, I got random chills. Which happens all the time it was pretty cold. But this time, as soon as I got the chills, everything in the room hanging on the walls fell off simultaneously. This really freaked me out, but it got a tiny bit worse. I got up and walked out of the room only to notice EVERYTHING hanging on a wall in my house had fallen (besides the television in my room). All the pictures in the living room and other rooms, all the trophies in my room from little league sports, and even a stand that held candles.

I wasn't sure what to do. I picked up all the stuff and hung it back up, which actually took me around 15-20 minutes. Then I drove to campus to finish my paper. Never told my parents.

It's also worth mentioning this happened around noon on a sunny day three winters ago.

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17. Another face in the mirror

I was 15 years old. I had just got home from work, so I went to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and get ready for bed. I'm in the middle of undressing when I look to my bedroom window to catch my reflection... and I see a man's face.

I dropped to the floor and turned off the lights, scrambling to get dressed, still watching the window. The face is gone, but I'm still watching, then... a camera. No face, just a camera pointed at me sitting on the floor.

I bolt from my room and tell my mom and brother. My brother went outside, and our ladder from the backyard was lying there. But nobody around. Couldn't sleep for a year after that, just stared at that window.

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16. When there's nowhere to run, just disappear

Cop here. I was dispatched to a house at about 1 am for a prowler. We get there and talk to the residents. Long story short they saw 2 people wearing masks in the yard across the street. It was like 2 weeks past Halloween so it seemed believable. We check the area and don't see anything. It's worth noting the residents didn't seem crazy at all.

An hour later we get called back. This time we have our dispatcher on the phone with them while we are surrounding the area. We (about 5 of us) are in a perfect position, dispatch tells us they can still see the prowlers in the next yard. We start to move in. Dispatch says the residents saw the two prowlers wave and move into the shed. Guess where I am? That's right, next to the shed.

I give verbal commands, bang on the door, and nothing. Fine, I'll come in after you. Doors open and... empty. I even think to check for a trap door. Nothing. It is raised about 4 inches so there isn't even a possibility of a door leading out.

I talk to the residents. They said as I was moving in on the shed the two put their finger to their lips (giving the shhhh sign) and then they both waved. They moved into the shed as I was next to it. We went over every possibility trying to come up with an explanation.

If the caller was just messing with us they had no prior history of it (as in repeated calls for service at the address). I'm not much of a believer in paranormal stuff but I can still appreciate a situation where I can not logically explain what just happened.

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15. A shadow in the basement

A few years ago my family moved to new Hampshire. First off, let me explain that the basement had a door that you could open in the backyard and that the door was made out of plywood - if someone wanted to break in, they could have.

Well, myself, my three sisters, and my brother were in the living room one night (basement door in the living room). My brother is trying to scare everyone and starts saying he can hear things coming from the basement. Finally he gets up and opens the door to the basement. We see someone's shadow and hear someone running at full speed down the basement stairs.

We scream bloody murder, step dad comes down with butcher knives ready to kill, he's in the basement and no one is there. The door is still intact outside and ever since then the dog wouldn't go into the living room (never would go into the basement either).

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14. How do you know my name?

My 8-year-old self was sitting in the dining room, drawing at the kitchen table.

I hear what sounded exactly like my mother say hello to me.

"Hello Ryan."

I turn to my left expecting to see my mother, instead a full body shadow person is standing there about 10 feet away from me standing in my kitchen.

I sat in shock looking at it for about 10 seconds.

It then turned to its left and walked into the wall.

I stand up and walk also to my right into my living room where my brother is doing homework.

"What's wrong?"

"I saw a ghost."

"Is that what called your name?"

It is very notable I never told my brother it said my name.

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13. Feeling someone else's pain

A few years ago I partook in a group meditation session. For one of the activities we had to partner up; one of us sat in a chair while the other stood behind and used their hands to guide energy around various parts of the body.

Not long into my session on the chair, I noticed a strange pain in my lower back. It wasn't a physical pain though... it's hard to describe it but it was more of an 'internal' pain right at the base of my spine as if my mind was making it up as part of the meditation process. Over 5 minutes or so it gradually got worse, to the point where it became throbbingly uncomfortable. In my mind I said something like 'I need this pain to stop now!' and it did. The rest of the session went by without a hitch.

Afterwards we discussed our experiences. As I told my story about my lower back pain, the woman who had been using her hands on me became visibly emotional and started to cry. I thought it was a strange reaction but didn't look too deeply into it.

A few weeks later the organizer of the meditation group emailed me to let me know the woman who assisted me at the session had passed away overnight. She'd been battling cancer of the lower spine for years and it got the better of her.

I've never felt so creeped out like I did that day when it clicked that I may have somehow been channeling her pain.

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12. That's just high quality parenting

My brother and I were probably about 7 and 5, respectively. We used to wake up every weekend and play computer games before my parents woke up. One day, we turned on the computer, and got an eerie message that was directed to us, it said:

"Hello Kid A and Kid B, this is your computer talking and I. AM. ALIVEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Do not run and tell your parents, they cannot help you now!!!"

Turns out my dad had programmed the computer to say that upon start up.

This was the mid 90s.

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11. Dreams so real

In high school I had a friend, we'll call him John for these purposes. Me and John played football together and we would always get extra lifting sessions in at the high school gym. We remained friends after high school and even worked together for a bit. He ended up getting into selling pills and our relationship deteriorated to the point we were no longer speaking.

Fast forward a few years later and I have this dream. In my dream, I am back at my high school gym lifting weights with John. We were just chatting about random stuff, having a good time and then he suddenly says that he has to go. I tell him I don't want him to leave because I want to keep hanging out and I missed him. He just says he's really sorry but has to leave, I say "OK, see ya later" and he replies with a nod and a "See ya."

I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing, I see it is my mom and answer it. She tells me that John had died last night and asking if I am OK. She had heard from John's mom who called in saying that John's siblings would not be at school the rest of the week because of his death. My mom was a secretary at the school they went to.

I can't help but think that something paranormal had happened to allow me to make peace with and say goodbye to my friend and have some bit of closure. He was 25 when he died and was the first person really close to me who I lost.

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10. The stranger who saved my life

When I was 16 in the mid 90s, I got in a fight with an acquaintance while a whole bunch of us were hanging out at his house. Stupid fight, I decided screw it, I was going home. I lived about 5 miles away, but I didn't have a car, and since it was 2am, there were no buses. I was going to walk home.

In the middle of the night, though a not-as-safe-as-it-seems neighborhood, as a tiny 16-year-old girl.

I left the house and started hoofing it. About a mile out, the suburban housing neighborhood melted into a main street, with highway access. I started to notice a greyish minivan following me. It would follow me, pass me, turn a corner, and about 3 blocks later, it would do the same thing. I mean, really really obvious what it was doing. I crossed over to the other side of the street so I was walking the opposite of traffic flow, and thus no car could come up behind me.

It kept doing it, on the other side of the street. About a mile later, there was a 24-hour grocery store, lights bright, but parking lot emptyish. I immediately crossed the parking lot and went to head inside.

Just before I got to the doors, the minivan that had been following me pulled up into one of the parking spots. A guy called out from the driver side and said:

"I don't want you to walk over here, just stay there and listen. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing. I saw you walking a while back, but I also saw a dark car that was following you. A couple of times you went to turn around, or stopped, so it started following you down a parallel side street. When I saw it, I started to follow you both, just to make sure you were safe. Go inside the store, and call someone to come pick you up, please. I haven't seen the car since you headed across the lot."

He waited until I was inside the store, and then pulled away. I didn't have anyone to call, so I just let the night cashier know what was going on, and hung out with her for about an hour and a half. Then I finished the walk home.

I've never forgotten the incident, or that man, whoever he was. During the walk, I never saw the dark car he mentioned, but I've always been convinced he saved my life that night.

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9. The psychedelic sombrero

Although nobody believes me, I know what I saw. And it wasn't a stealth bomber.

I was about 14, and at about 10:30 I was in bed trying to fall asleep on a school night. I started to hear a hum that quickly began growing in intensity, as whatever was making it got closer. So I bent the blinds on the window behind me and peered out. Something bright was steadily approaching, and it was flying very low.

As it got closer, I began to see more detail. In the middle was a bright white sphere. It had long shafts coming out radially from this central sphere. At the end of each of these shafts (maybe 10-15 in total) was a smaller sphere, each illuminated with a different color (noticeably dimmer than the central sphere). It zoomed right overhead - couldn't have been more than 20 feet over my house.

I ran downstairs and told my parents. They told me to go back to bed. Next day I told my friends and teachers. They laughed at me. They suggested it was probably a stealth bomber because there's an AFB nearby and stealth bomber sightings aren't rare. This thing was the opposite of stealthy.

So I have no idea what it was, but I'll never forget the night I saw the psychedelic sombrero.

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8. Buried but not dead

This is an old family story.

My family has lived in rural Nebraska since they immigrated from Germany in the mid-1800s. Near the turn of the century disease was pretty rampant in the homesteading area and it killed off members of almost every family. When someone died from illness, time was of the essence in burying them as not to let the virus spread from the deceased to the living. This meant no wake periods.

So an aunt of some unknown number of "greats" preceding her relationship to me dies of some disease and she gets buried in the family cemetery on the the homestead. The dogs were very fond of her so it wasn't too surprising that after the funeral the two dogs stuck near the grave.

The rest of the family began to think something of it when, a week and a half later, the dogs were still visiting her grave almost constantly. But they weren't just at the grave. They were visibly distressed, frantic, and often barking while there.

This goes on for maybe two weeks when the family decides to check it out. They dig the casket up and open it.

The deceased's hair has all been pulled out. Her fingers are raw and bloody and mangled from where, on the inside of the casket door, they can see deep scratches in the wood.

She was comatose when they buried her, and she came to while underground, spending probably her last five or so days alive in a buried casket.

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7. "As I'm on the phone, the window breaks"

I was home alone once when my parents were out of town. We had just moved into our house, so there was an empty lot next to us, with a house half built. My parents were the types to leave the outdoor side garage door unlocked. Well, while they were gone I was watching TV, and all of a sudden the door that leads into my garage from the inside starts to wiggle. I put my TV on mute and I listen again, I see it actually move that time.

I start freaking out and I'm kind of in shock looking for the phone, can't find the house phone, so I search for my cell. Remembered I left my charger in my parents' car so I'm frantically looking for the house phone. Our house was so new, my mom hadn't even put blinds or drapes up in the kitchen or living room. Well, whoever was wiggling my garage door knob starts banging on the windows in my living room. Again no blinds or phone, and at that moment I realize this guy is seeing my every move, so I shoot upstairs. Again looking frantically for the phone and also trying to figure out how and where I'd jump out of my house to get away from the maniac that's outside my house if I needed to.

He then starts pounding on my front door. I can tell at that point, he's using something metal or plastic by the sound of the thumps. I really thought he was going to shoot my door open. I remember at that moment I was furious at myself for being a stupid teenager that frequently talked on the phone because I always just left it lying around, never putting it back on the base. I wanted so badly to push the the button that detects where my house phone is, but I thought if he heard where it was, he'd break the window nearest to it and take it.

I then remembered I left the phone in my mom's room, and as I pass the hallway to her room I see two people pacing in front of my house. I'm freaking out trying to find my dad's gun in my parents bedroom. I find the phone and call 911. As I'm on the phone, the window breaks. I'm upstairs and am scared to death. Suddenly everything goes silent. I'm waiting in my parents pitch black closet for what seems like an eternity, then I hear the sirens.

Cops show up but there is no one to be found. I figured that they hadn't gone too far since it had just occurred. Cops never found my tormenters. On the plus side, the company building the house next door, same company that built ours, hired overnight security to stay on our street until the house was built which was definitely refreshing.

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6. Being followed in the middle of nowhere

Driving on a super isolated road late at night in rural New Mexico. I was on 285 North, for those who know. For those who don't, it's a skinny little two-lane road for the most part which goes right through the middle of a lot of nothing with roughly 100 miles of nothing on either side of it.

I was followed for a long way by a huge black pickup truck. One of those giant Dodge king ranch things, all black, cow catcher on the front, limo black on all the windows, everything.

It tailgated me at 85mph for about 75 miles, and when I stopped at a truck stop to pee it pulled off too, but nobody got out. It just idled away in the parking lot until I got back in and got on the highway again. The driver followed me all the way to Carlsbad before peeling off and heading back south. I've never seen it again, but I refuse to make that drive by myself anymore.

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5. Snowed in emergency

One night, about ten months ago, there was a pretty heavy snow storm in my area. All of the roads were closed and a curfew was issued for everybody except emergency medical personnel.

I had been shoveling snow for most of the day and was dead tired come nightfall. Didn't have the energy to do much of anything besides eat dinner and lay down. I fire up some OG Star Trek and begin to doze off.

A couple of hours later, around 1AM, I hear the sound of a door rattling and a slight whisper saying my name. I sit up a bit and realize it's coming from my parents' room, becoming fainter with the passing time. After 10 minutes or so, I gather up the courage to see what is going on.

Crappy folding knife in hand, I peak out into the hallway and don't see anything. The noise is still coming from the room next door, the rattling becoming more rushed as I approach. Cautiously, I open the door and sneak inside. It's pitch black and I can't see anything.

My eyes are taking entirely too long to adjust to the darkness. I'm shuffling forward, and all of the sudden, something grabs and pulls on my leg. At this point I was so freaked out I jumped back. As the whispers continued, I recognized my dad's voice. He was asking me for help.

He had had a stroke while walking to use the bathroom around 1AM that night. After he fell, he was able to use his left foot to rattle the door to his bathroom. My mom fell asleep on the couch in the living room and wasn't around to help or hear. I was able to grab the house phone and call 911, and despite the weather, the police and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes.

That was the scariest night of my life. The doctors told us there wasn't much hope for my dad before going into surgery, since he had a hemorrhagic stroke and there was a massive amount of bleeding.

Fast forward 10 months and my old man is cognitively the same, just paralyzed on his right side. He had every infection under the sun while in the hospital, but he staved them off and is still with us today. He was my best friend before the incident, and my hero after.

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4. "Someone killed my husband but it wasn't me"

When I was really little my parents would let me stay up late on the weekends and watch TV until I fell asleep. I really loved these times and I would stay up later than anybody else just because I could.

Well one night I was almost asleep on the couch when I heard a noise on our front porch. It was the sound of our old fashioned porch swing moving back and forth. I was a little scared so I crept toward the bay windows of my living room and peeked out towards the porch. Sitting on my front porch swing was an older woman, probably in her 50's wearing nothing but a night gown, covered in blood and holding a huge kitchen knife.

I flipped out immediately and ran screaming into my parents room but was too terrified to form words. My parents saw that I was upset, but when I finally was able to tell them what I saw, my dad got really angry and told me that it was just a dream and to go back to bed. I refused and kept crying and screaming until he had had enough and snatched my arm and dragged me towards the front door to prove that nothing was there. I kicked and screamed all the way trying to make him stop, but he kept pulling me.

Finally we got to the door, he unlocked it, swung it open and said "See theres nothing th-" To this day, I have never seen the look of fear and shock that was on his face when that woman turned and stared at both of us and slowly stood up with the knife.

My dad slammed the door shut and got my mom to call the police while he went and got his gun. He went back to the door with a 12 gauge and cracked the door enough to stick the barrel out. He asked her what she was doing and she said, "Somebody killed my husband, but it wasn't me." My dad told her that the police were coming, and she freaked out, grabbed the knife and walked away. They police found her 15 minutes later trying to break into one of our neighbors' houses.

I never slept in the living room again.

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3. "Go in the bathroom and shut the door"

Growing up, my bedroom was the only one that faced the front of the house/street. When I was about 8 or 9, I woke up to my dad calmly but firmly telling me to get up, go in the bathroom, and shut the door. I was annoyed because I was half asleep, but I listened. Apparently I was more tired than I realized, because I feel asleep on the bathroom floor.

The next morning I asked my mom what happened. She seemed oblivious and confused. I looked at my dad like she was crazy, and I asked him why he had woken me up. He denied doing it. I was becoming frustrated to the point of tears, but I ultimately let it go.

Fast forward to college. I was home one break, and I decided to ask again. I had thought of that night off and on for years, and it still bothered me. This time, my dad goes, "Ha! I was wondering if you even remembered that."

Turns out that a lot of houses on our block were being vandalized and robbed all those years ago. Someone had broken into the garage and was inside the house. My room was partially over the garage. My dad heard it happen and quietly got me to safety. Police were called, the guy ran. He was never caught, however, and my parents didn't want a terrified kid on their hands, so for years they pretended like nothing had ever happened.

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2. Almost three bodies instead of one

One day my friend and I decided to go camping at a hot spring that was closed due to a recent fire. We arrived there and set up our tent, it was about 8 PM. We stripped and went up to the hot spring. I brought a machete just in case. We had to climb up to it and the only way going down was going back the slippery way we came.

We hung there for about 2 and a half hours when a flashlight came on from above our heads. There was someone right above us. Keep in mind it's 10:30 at a closed down site when it's pitch black. So we are in The worst possible position; wet, naked, cold, alone, dark, and all we have is a machete.

Well this person walks around the area for about 45 minutes with a flashlight before it suddenly stops. My friend and I still decide to stay there for a bit and now it is 1AM. Then we run out when it's 30 degrees so we're shivering cold. We get our pants and unlaced shoes on. He packs up our tent while I walk around with a machete on watch. Then we begin to run through the black burnt forest and since we were so scared we thought that everything was something. I thought the wind was a distant laugh or a branch was a face. But eventually we made it back to the car after an hour of traversing the forest.

A week later on the news we saw that a dead body was found in the river nearby.

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1. Life saved by someone who's already dead

Back when my grandfather died, his children and some of the grandchildren took turns in staying over at grandma's house. We'd spend the night and help her out around the house, while also having some time alone in the house we all love and spending some final moments with grandpa, his (embalmed...?) body in the living room where his big old desk used to be.

The house was on a pretty big plot of land with a nice big barn, and while grandma loved her gardening, grandpa used to take care of the lawn. One day he had felt a bit wheezy while mowing the lawn, so he went inside and eventually ended up calling the doctor and going to the hospital. He unceremoniously died three weeks later, unwilling to fight the cancer that had formed in his gut over the past few years.

As one of the older grandkids, I stayed over one night as well. Bluntly speaking, I was a bit on edge with just having a dead body in the house, but nothing really eventful happened that night. Said goodnight to my grandfather (ya, felt weird) and went upstairs to rest.

The next morning my grandmother was already preparing dinner for all the people that would be coming by to pay their respects. She, quite sternly, told me she wanted to do this particular thing alone, so I decided to start the day by mowing the stretch of lawn my grandfather never got to finish. I knew how big he and grandmother have always been on having the garden in top shape whenever there were people over and I didn't want to let him down. It wasn't a small patch of grass, but I figured the electric push-mower should be more than enough. I hooked it up using a long, orange extension cord and got to work.

Now, you have to know, my grandfather was a skilled, but super safe, handyman. He was an electrical engineer by trade and always working on the house or tinkering in the barn, doing the bigger gardening projects my grandmother couldn't do, making us toys or fixing our bikes, etc. We always got to help him out, but he always kept an eye on us with whatever we were doing, making sure we were using the tools in the correct way, weren't running around with screwdrivers in our pockets, teaching us how to work with the electric mower and how to handle the long extension cord to not run over it with the mower.

When I was mowing the lawn, I was thinking about all of that instead of actually minding the extension cord. I messed up. I ran over a coil of it, slightly damaging the cable down to the copper, but not cutting it in half completely.

The safest way to proceed would be to unplug the cord, roll it back up and get another, not-damaged one. What I did puzzles me to this day; I was nearing completion anyway and decided to continue a bit longer, (now...) carefully avoiding the cord. After finishing up, I went to roll up the cord around my arm, as I always did, as my grandfather taught me. I was thinking about him, how hard this was on grandma, and I stopped minding where I grabbed the cord. I grabbed straight into the exposed copper. I felt a short, sharp jolt in the palm of my hand and immediately realized what happened. I tried to let go but my hand and arm cramped up. At the time, naively, I thought I was gonna die, and I thought how stupid I had been, and how this would impact my already grieving family.

It must've only been a split second, but it felt like I had stood there for ten minutes. Suddenly the reflexes in my arm kicked in and I threw the cable to the floor. I took a moment to breathe and stood there, dazed out of my mind, listening to the wind in the trees and trying to figure out what had happened. I made my way into the barn to unplug the cord from the wall.

It wasn't plugged in.

I figured I must've yanked it out of the wall with my (not-so) Ninja reflexes, but quickly realized the angle for me to be able to do that were all wrong, and besides, there was a tonne of slack in the cable.

I checked in and around the barn, but there was no one on the property. I could see my grandmother through the kitchen window, still working on preparing meals for the tens of people that would come around later. The dog was still in his own enclosed section of the garden on the other side of the house, ears pointed, tail in the air, eyes fixated on me and the barn behind me, nervously whimpering and pacing back and forth.

I had never believed in something of a spirit world, an afterlife, souls or 'energy' staying behind in the physical world, any of that. But as silly as it sounds, on that day I did.

On that day, I was convinced my grandfather was watching my back to make sure I wasn't doing anything stupid.

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