Spooky Stories of Your Own?

[The Witch]

In the spirit of Halloween ☠

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately since they're free (no tv anymore) and I'm addicted to the horror/mystery podcasts. So I was wondering if anyone here has any scary/spooky stories of their own? It doesn't have to be about Halloween, just anything that genuinely terrified you, but you do get bonus points if the story happens on Halloween, lol.

I've got quite a few scary situations that I could discuss but I wanna hear y'all's first.

The only rule is, no skepticism allowed!

 

[The Welsh Paddy]

I'm always skeptical though... even when "spooky" stuff happens to me!

There was this one time that got me pretty damn unsettled though. Years ago, I used to stay over at my uncle's old house. This was when I was in my mid teens and first started properly getting into horror films and he had a HUGE collection, so I'd be there every weekend and we'd just be watching loads of scary films. There was a tendency for weird stuff to happen at his house. Things just literally vanishing off the face of the earth, never anything valuable though. Another time, some closet door just randomly opened on its own despite having made so many efforts to open it a number of occasions before that happened. Going upstairs at night as well if I ever needed to go to the loo or whatever, I'd always feel like I was being watched. I chalked that down to being on edge from watching scary films though.

One day, one of my cousins came round to the house as well with her son. He was only a toddler, not long started being able to walk and he was super inquisitive about everything. So he was wandering around downstairs and then he stopped at the bottom of the staircase. I heard him giggling so I went to see what he was up to and he just looked at me with a massive grin on his face and pointed upstairs. He started climbing the stairs and I followed him to make sure he didn't fall. He went into the bathroom and pointed to one of the upper corners of the room. There was literally nothing there and he just started laughing again, waved and said "Hiya" at this empty corner in the bathroom as if he was interacting with someone. Creeped the hell out of me at the time, so I picked him up and took him back down stairs.

Looking back at it now, I just peg it down to an overactive child's imagination, but that's probably the spookiest thing that's happened around me.

 

[The Witch]

Lol, holy crud... That was good, man. I'm a paranormal believer so I'm chalking it up to GHOSTS!


FYI, in the movies, if a child giggles and points at an empty corner of the room... GET OUT ASAP. lol


Okay, so here's mine.


First week of September something spooky and unexplainable happened to me (note: this isn't the only spooky thing that's happened in this house). Our house is old (like 1970s) and so things naturally make noises or doors will just pop open sometimes but I know the "habits" of the house and know when something is unusual. I made it a habit to know the house's "behavior" because the home's previous owner was abusive and violent and I've always worried that angry spirits lurk about. There are "hot spots" (people call them) of actviity in haunted homes, and for my home, one of those spots is my parent's room. I've always had a strange feeling about it--like something was watching you. It's a very unsettling feeling, so much so that I often just do a lil prayer before going in there if I'm by myself. And at night? Forget it, that place gotta be lit up like daytime for me to go in there.

So on September 4th, it was just me at home and I needed to go to my mom's room to get some tissue to blow my nose (I had a cold). On my way in I paid enough attention to my surroundings to make sure the bathroom door was shut (my cat has a habit of following me and going in there so I always make sure it's closed). I was looking for the tissue paper around my mom's work desk, my back turned to the bathroom, then I heard the slow click of the bathroom door (a sound that can only happen if someone is literally turning the knob). Now, this sound did win some acknowledgment from me, but for whatever reason, I did not look behind me to see what the hell was going on. I'm used to a busy and full house so I guess my dayquil drugged mind was just being dumb and lazy to even care to check why I was hearing a door open when I was the only one home.

I couldn't find the tissues so I turned to leave the bedroom and right then, the door to the bathroom slammed open so hard that it was still bouncing off the wall by the time I realized what had just happened. I stood there like a deer in headlights just watching it. I noped out of there so hecking fast that I nearly tripped over myself running down the hall.

After I retreated to my room I did what any millennial would do and tweeted what had just happened. I mean hello, it was either a murderer or a ghost--so I I had to document it.

Anyway, I lived so I guess the ghost tripped or was just an ass and wanted to spook me. And while this doesn't sound so terrifying---believe me, when you're alone in a house and you hear a door open that shouldn't be opening, your blood runs cold. I'm still freaked out to go in there alone or even at night.

 

[The Welsh Paddy]

That does sound pretty terrifying!

I'd actually love to stay in some haunted place or other. Not like those haunted hotels and stuff. To me, that just reeks of cash grabbing. But old houses and stuff. It fascinates me, and I've got a love for history in relation to that kind of thing. Like, the other day me and a friend went exploring this dilapidated building that was built in the mid 1800s and has been abandoned for about a hundred years or so, just after the first world war, if I remember rightly. Apparently it's haunted. During the war it was supposedly used as a sort of makeshift medical center for wounded soldiers and stuff, so I can imagine there being quite a few deaths there. It would have been neat to camp out there, but it was structurally unsafe. Woulda sucked if a ceiling collapsed in on us while we were asleep.

 

[Mitsuki]

I was too scared to finish reading your post, Cali. Got to the ‘click’ part and I’m like, nope! I’m in bed and I don’t want any nightmares!

Before I was married to my husband we lived with his mom for a few months. She has this really crazy, mean cat named Toby. I was sleeping soundly in our futon in the living room, when all of a sudden he jumped on my chest!! I almost had a heart attack... my chest hurt and my heart wouldn’t stop beating wildly. I was gasping for breath, holding on for dear life. That was pretty spooky.

But creepy, spooky stories... sure I’ve heard and felt some unwanted presence, but I don’t like talking about it. I don’t mess around with that stuff... nor do I have any desire to watch things that spooks me, which is why I stay away from horror movies.

The old house I grew up in the Philippines is especially haunted because that site is a Japanese burial ground (WWII) from what I heard, and one of my cousins have been attacked (marks to prove it) in the bathroom she couldn’t open. Yeah, screw that. I’ve always hated that bathroom when I was a child...

 

[JasonTandro]

I write horror short stories under the pen name FearAddict, and you better believe I've had a few spooky things happen to me. I consider myself a fringe-skeptic. I believe 99% of spooky things are explained logically. But I also won't deny that there are a few things I can't explain that have happened to me and I generally don't invite anything into my life. (Both of my brothers have had terrible things happen to them involving Ouija Boards).

So, eh, buckle up I guess here are a few of the things that have happened to me. If you want I'll tell you the stories of what happened to my brothers with the Ouija Board and a story about my father's near-demon-experience from when he was a kid, but right now I'll stick to my own stuff.

Spoiler: An unexplained shadow in the woods behind my apartment

For me, the biggest supernatural experience was something involving a small patch of woods out behind my old apartment complex. When I say patch, I mean just that. A tiny little patch which was maybe a quarter-mile wide and only 2/10ths of a mile deep. There was a tiny hill with some rocks that we used to scramble on and that part we used to hang out at all the time. It was a great place to go, especially in the summer because VA summers get hot. The shade was great, and you even had to crawl under a small canopy path to get inside (or you could go around through pricker bushes, but nobody wanted to do that).

This place was at the bottom of a massive hill that we used for sledding in the winter, and the was looked over by the largest stand-alone tree I have ever seen in person. Putting a rough estimate on it, this tree was about 6-stories high, but it was obscenely wide. We're talking you could hide an SUV behind it. The point I'm getting to is that this place was old and it was pretty out of the way (comparatively speaking).

We dubbed this patch of woods "Fox Eye Den", a name for which I don't have an explanation; it just sounded cool to us. However, this was really just the central part of it. To the right, you would find some ruins of stone-work and we suspect a cabin was once there. Teens would go there for some "alone time" and leave behind some artifacts of their own so we didn't venture there too much. But to the left was a sub-section of the forest which we nicknamed the "Witch's Cauldron". You actually had to climb to the top of the hill almost on the other side of the forest and then navigate down through an even more treacherous set of rocks. This area was far more open which you would think would make it less creepy. But it was definitely not. There was a massive stone basin, cracked down the middle, for which this patch got its name. There was also a noose that was hanging from the tree, and given where we lived we just tried not to call attention to it. Not sure why we never cut the thing down, but we were like 10.

So here's where the spooky bit comes in. One night I decided to try camping out in that patch of woods. You have to understand it was early fall, so the leaves were starting to fall off, making it a bit more open. I had a sleeping bag and a cheap tent which I never got a chance to set up. It wasn't the middle of the night or anything like that. This was about 6 PM if memory serves.

I was alone, and I never went there alone before. And after this, I didn't go there alone after either. As I was setting up the tent just a short distance from the basin, I hear something dart through the trees. We're too far in the town to attract much of the deer population, but we did once in a while get a fox. I look up towards the noise expecting to see something about knee-high. What I saw was a strange fuzzy grey shape which darted between two trees. It was about five feet tall and roughly human shaped.

Now I had the unflinching boldness and emotional fortitude of an eleven year old boy and so I shouted once something to the effect of "Who's there?" I had to pass the trees to get out safely, but I decided to take the risky option of climbing straight up the scramble because fuck that noise. I was still thinking it was a human who, for some reason, wasn't showing themselves. But I managed to get to the top of the hill and look back towards the trees and see nothing. Remember, the forest was narrow, empty and the foliage was about half-gone. I would have heard or seen something move. I didn't and I didn't feel like investigating further.

I wish I had some cool epilogue like we discovered that somebody had killed themselves there or something, but I really don't. Point is, I didn't go wandering back there alone after that encounter.

Spoiler: My trip to Dejarnette's Sanitorium

The other one I can remember is my trip up to Dejarnette's Sanitorium with my sister Meg and our mutual friend Josh. This was when I was about 20-21ish. I actually have video of my trip there, but unfortunately it doesn't capture anything especially noteworthy. That being said, while we were out there, we saw some stuff, or thought we did, that freaked us out enough to leave without actually making it inside.

Dejarnette's Sanitorium is in Staunton, VA and is all boarded up now (in fact they're fixing to tear it down, I think, as they've been building on all the old government land). It was a truly horrible place run by a Hitler-supporting eugenicist who was a terrifying piece of shit. About four-years ago I tried to write a spooky story about that place, but I don't think it turned out all that good. However I used footage from our trip in the narration I did of that story, so you can at least "see" what it was like (link:

)

Anyway, the biggest thing that we noticed were just odd spectral shapes wandering around the ground. Like we can't explain it. They were always a distance, it's this massive open field so we know nobody else is there with us or nothing, but we weren't going to mess around further. I realize that's not a very good story, so sorry about that, but the place itself is pretty creepy. You should look it up!

 

[Miko]

I don't recall anything particularly spooky happening to me like the above posts... Though we did live in one house for a few years where I swear I would see a cat inside from time to time... and when I would double-look it wouldn't be there. The same house I remember once my mom was calling my name repeatedly from just around the corner. After asking 'what?' a few times I got up and walked out asking her 'What?!' a bit irritated and she looked at me all confused because, of course, she wasn't calling me. The place at times would have some unsettling feelings but it was old, infested with these mother-suckers, and relatively damp.

Also not as interesting, but I was still scared: A while back my mom and I went out to a second hand clothing shop and I found something that I wanted to give someone as a gift. I don't want to say I was 'drawn to it' because it didn't seem that way, but looking back now I can see that it definitely caught my eye immediately as I didn't give it a second thought when I just tossed it in my cart. Honestly I forgot about it up until I got home later that night and folded it to put away. I left it out and headed to bed a short while later. I remember laying there in the dark by myself trying to fall asleep. At some point I must have, because I recall 'dreaming' of being in this very old building. It was very black and white, and the people around me all looked like these (faceless) Amish ceramic figures my grandma has at her house, but their entire bodies were made of a black porcelain. The only thing not black about them was this small pattern on their stomachs that showed through a tiny bit of underneath the black. I can remember hearing them all whisper to themselves and look at me with their... facelessness? Lol! But I woke up I guess, because I remember realizing I was still in bed but I had his incredible pressure on my body pushing me into the mattress. The first thing that came to my mind was that stupid thing I bought earlier - it wasn't even really prompted, it just unconsciously pinged in my head. The fear was a bit much though and I got up and tossed it outside. I felt a bit better and went back to bed, but 3 days later I ended up pitching it because I couldn't get over that feeling. Side note, I do suffer from some kind of sleep paralysis occasionally so that's probably the source of my anxiety over the shirt, but it still made me very uncomfortable and couldn't have it in the house anymore.


Writing that out reminded me of more more thing. I thought I wrote it out before but I couldn't find it on quick glance, so I'll type it up again. The sleep paralysis has happened to me on and off for many years but usually I'm not actually paralyzed, I just happen to open my eyes and see things when I'm asleep. This particular time happened to me last year I think - I was trying to fall asleep in bed and had my eyes closed for a while. I must have stirred from sleep because I opened my eyes to the outside part of the bed and saw a figure standing next to me - right next to my head. It looked like a girl with really long black hair. It's arms were all contorted up and holding onto it's head and face as it stared down at me. I remember feeling extreme shock as I closed my eyes and rolled over. I tapped on my husband's shoulder to wake him up and asked him 'Is there someone behind me?' - Poor guy jumped a bit and looked, but assured me no one was there. I actually knew I was asleep but I wanted the reassurance. I've only ever saw one 'figure' before that night (the previous one was like a shadow dragon?) Usually it's just hair, thread or bugs that I see when I'm experiencing that.... But this one time in particular really scared me. Took a while to go back to sleep.



Anyway, I can't actually decide if it was my sleep paralysis on the above few or if I actually saw something. (Or maybe a bit of both?) I'll let you guys form your own spooky thoughts I guess.

 

[Dionysos]

I am a sceptic, but I’ll leave that at the door and I do concede that there are things we still don’t understand.

Until a couple of years ago I’d only experienced a handful of mild spooky events.

When I was a child of about five years or six years old (I think), I was playing in a play park and had climbed to the top of the wooden climbing structure. I was at a caravan park and for some reason my parents weren’t there, nor was anybody else. My parents weren’t the neglectful sort so they can’t have been far, but to me it felt like they were. It was only me in the play park as well. Suddenly I felt the atmosphere change. There was a sudden chill in the air and it got darker (probably a cloud) and creepy music began to play (probably from the nearby entertainment centre). Finally I saw some creature scurry along the ground (probably a squirrel, but it didn't seem to move like a squirrel). The combination of these things really unnerved me and I always told myself when I was a kid that there was a ghost there, but as I’ve said in the parentheses they can all be explained.

Then there was the haunting of T’ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger… If that sounds to you like the PSX classic action game featuring an anthropomorphic tiger, then you would be correct! I loved the game and had already played through the whole thing and put it aside for many months, probably many years. One day I had invited some friends over. We were bored of playing multiplayer games so I decided to show off this game for some reason. We played it, enjoyed it for several hours, then returned to the title screen and started chatting with each other. But the game had other plans.

The game did not want to be ignored so easily. First of all the game cancelled its standby movie loop so it could return to the title screen. Then the controller started behaving of its own accord and began to scroll down the options on the title screen's start menu. It did this for about thirty seconds, if not longer, and then it selected 'new game'. It watched the cutscene and started to play the game, poorly. The ‘ghost’ was just slashing at the wall and running about randomly. Then the ‘ghost’ appeared to rage quit the game, pressed the start button and selected quit, etc.

Me and my friends were fascinated by this. We laughed a lot, but we weren’t sure what had happened at all. We continued to stare in anticipation, and the ‘ghost’ didn’t appear to suffer from stage fright. It had another go and loaded up another new game and tried the same thing. Maybe it is difficult for a ghost to use a PlayStation controller? Do they even have thumbs? Or maybe this ‘ghost’ was inside the disc itself.

I’d assumed it was a faulty controller but it never gave me issues like that with any other game on any other occasion. I found it hilarious for many years that the sort of ghost I'd meet would be a fan of T'ai Fu...

-

As I said at the beginning, until a couple of years ago these were the spookiest things I’d experienced.

Until, like Dagger, I experienced a few sleep paralysis episodes (mild ones, in my case, but unsettling enough to me).

In the first instance I was shattered and lay in bed and turned to my left. I hadn’t been in my bed for more than ten or twenty seconds, so I wasn’t anywhere near asleep. But I saw, quite vividly, what appeared to be a pygmy warrior lady staring at me with an angry face. I shook my head and looked again and she was gone. To my knowledge there is absolutely zero reason for a spirit of this nature to visit me, so she must have been pulled from my own mind. Yet I'm not sure how it relates to classic sleep paralysis as I couldn't have been approaching sleep at that time.

The second instance was while I was on holiday this year. Again, I was shattered after a long journey. I lay in bed and turned, again, to my left. This time I was definitely asleep and had been sleeping for several hours. At about 5.00 or 6.00 am I looked at the curtains near the bed. They were moving. I continued to watch them as a face appeared from behind the curtain, eventually followed by a hand. I tried desperately to call out or to get out of bed and either confront this person or run away, but I could not do anything at all. The figure (which was possibly an elderly woman but I couldn’t quite tell) then moved its finger to its mouth to signal that I should be silent and it appeared to mouth words like “No! Don’t!” as it smiled sinisterly.

Eventually I managed to yell and I woke myself up. It turns out that in reality the curtain was closer to me than it appeared during my experience. The nightmare had ensured that the curtain was slightly farther away so that I could get a good view of the creepy figure.

I call these mild sleep paralysis episodes as they both ended with the vision of the figure (so sleep paralysis is used by me only to attempt to explain my experiences, and not because I know for certain that they weren't for some reason vengeful spirits or portents of doom). I thankfully did not get to experience the figure climbing onto my chest and throttling me as in classic sleep paralysis cases. That would probably have finished me off!

 

[Miko]

I was thinking about this today and thought it was a good time to revive this thread since it's nearly Halloween once again



A couple of months ago, August I believe, I was in the kitchen doing dishes while my kid was eating lunch. He's about 3 1/2, so you know... prime age for when kids are their most creepiest for creepy story time. Anyway, my dude is quietly eating (chicken nugs or something IDK) while I'm putting some dishes away when all of a sudden he's going "I'm very scared."

Now, I know there was nothing scary, and my dude says things like this all the time. He watches programs that deal with kids going to the doctor, dentist, being scared, all that kid-friendly stuff about dealing with emotions or experiences. He says stuff like 'I'm scared', 'I not feel well', 'I've got red spots', etc.... So I blew him off

Okay, I didn't blow him off, but I just dismissed him and kept doing dishes while he was eating.

Still, he's very insistent, "Mommy, I very scared." "I'm scared for daddy." "Daddy get in a crash." By now I'm curious. He had woken up in the middle of the night the night before so I thought maybe he remembered a dream or something. Still, I had just talked to his daddio via text, so I tell him that Daddy is fine and that he's still at work, he's not even driving. That's not good enough though, and he goes back to pointing outside the window, insisting that Daddy was going to crash.

I went through a routine of questions. "Who told you that?" "Where did you hear that?" "Did you see Daddy crash?" "Did you see someone else crash?" Yadda yadda -No. He insists that Daddy is going to crash, and he's very scared for him.

So, I reassure him over and over that things are fine, daddy is fine, we are fine, the fineness of our existence is fine. We all good and cool as cucumbers. We're at this, from start to finish, about an hour before the day goes back to normal. Popz arrives home all good, no crash, we think nothing of it and go to bed.

Next day my brother gets into a car accident.






P.S. - He's fine & it was very minor but it was still freaky and coincidental.

 

[winksgaming12]

In the spirit of Halloween ☠

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately since they're free (no tv anymore) and I'm addicted to the horror/mystery podcasts. So I was wondering if anyone here has any scary/spooky stories of their own? It doesn't have to be about Halloween, just anything that genuinely terrified you, but you do get bonus points if the story happens on Halloween, lol.

I've got quite a few scary situations that I could discuss but I wanna hear y'all's first.

The only rule is, no skepticism allowed!

The worse one I have for you. I was in a hotel shooting around the year 2004. I ended up living at that hotel in 2011. Every single night I would have dreams that someone was breaking in, the door was left open, there were nights that my girlfriend, now wife, would find me in the bathroom sleeping or move something in front of the door. Once I moved out of that hotel it all stopped. I am not a person that dreams either nor do I remember any of my dreams, but obviously something was going on either in my head or out in the spiritual side of things that caused me to panic for a few months.

 

[Dionysos]

As I said at the beginning, until a couple of years ago these were the spookiest things I’d experienced.

Until, like Dagger, I experienced a few sleep paralysis episodes (mild ones, in my case, but unsettling enough to me).

In the first instance I was shattered and lay in bed and turned to my left. I hadn’t been in my bed for more than ten or twenty seconds, so I wasn’t anywhere near asleep. But I saw, quite vividly, what appeared to be a pygmy warrior lady staring at me with an angry face. I shook my head and looked again and she was gone. To my knowledge there is absolutely zero reason for a spirit of this nature to visit me, so she must have been pulled from my own mind. Yet I'm not sure how it relates to classic sleep paralysis as I couldn't have been approaching sleep at that time.

The second instance was while I was on holiday this year. Again, I was shattered after a long journey. I lay in bed and turned, again, to my left. This time I was definitely asleep and had been sleeping for several hours. At about 5.00 or 6.00 am I looked at the curtains near the bed. They were moving. I continued to watch them as a face appeared from behind the curtain, eventually followed by a hand. I tried desperately to call out or to get out of bed and either confront this person or run away, but I could not do anything at all. The figure (which was possibly an elderly woman but I couldn’t quite tell) then moved its finger to its mouth to signal that I should be silent and it appeared to mouth words like “No! Don’t!” as it smiled sinisterly.

Eventually I managed to yell and I woke myself up. It turns out that in reality the curtain was closer to me than it appeared during my experience. The nightmare had ensured that the curtain was slightly farther away so that I could get a good view of the creepy figure.

I call these mild sleep paralysis episodes as they both ended with the vision of the figure (so sleep paralysis is used by me only to attempt to explain my experiences, and not because I know for certain that they weren't for some reason vengeful spirits or portents of doom). I thankfully did not get to experience the figure climbing onto my chest and throttling me as in classic sleep paralysis cases. That would probably have finished me off!

I can now add a new incident... Unfortunately.

I experienced a vivid auditory hallucination the other night. I was lying in bed and reading while trying to relax ready for going to sleep. Then just as my eyes started to close I heard a voice shout "BOO!" right in front of my face. There was nobody there.

Needless to say, it took a while for my heart to recover and longer for me to actually sleep after that. Of all things for an imaginary person to shout at me? BOO? Why couldn't it be "You got this, Dan! You rock!" or something positive?

The earlier examples of hallucinations or (almost sleep paralysis episodes) were both visual. This recent experience, however, is the first time I'm aware of me hearing something. Glad I didn't see something too this time though. That would have finished me off. I'd still be running away now if that had happened...