15 people share their most paranormal experiences.

Regardless of whether you consider yourself a spiritual person or not, there's something endlessly fascinating about the concept of the paranormal.

The idea of a spiritual world has been present in the human psyche throughout all of history, you find it in religion, TV shows, ghost stories, folklore, and people's personal stories at the office.

And now, the internet serves as yet another place to explore these ideas and potential realities.

In a popular post on Ask Reddit, people shared their paranormal experiences, and it's a fascinating range of stories.

1. From Issualave:

When I get fevers as a child, I would always, in my fugue and pain-infused state, hear a man counting in a very deep voice. He would count from 1 and up; as the numbers get larger, the voice gets louder and more intense. It started to get less frequent as I grew older and now I do not experience it anymore.

I've brushed it aside as a recurring nightmare until only recently, I've learned that my sister would experience the exact same thing when she was younger as well. It's not the scariest thing, but it does send shivers down my spine trying to comprehend this.

2. From DannyPantsgasm:

I work in a cemetery. One evening I stayed late to do some catch-up work. I was taking pictures of some granite samples to have on my phone and had already locked up. I was alone. As I was holding my phone, I heard the doorway to the basement swing open, slam shut, and heard footsteps go down the stairs. I froze.

I thought for sure someone had come in. I called out to see if it was someone from maintenance. No reply. I got scared because if it wasn’t them someone had broken in. I stayed still for a bit and listened then called out again. Nothing. Finally, I got brave enough to look. No one there. I peeked down the basement, empty. All the doors were still locked.

3. From snoosh00:

When I was 3 I told my parents that my great-grandmother came to me in a dream and said her feet didn't hurt anymore (I think she had problems due to diabetes or something). She had died that night, they received the call shortly after I told them. Not paranormal, but a spooky coincidence.

4. From SteamDecked:

I went with my best friend during high school for summer vacation to his grandparents' who live in the countryside in Japan. I stayed in his mom's old room which has a small wall closet. just above this closet was a smaller closet door (like a foot and a half tall and about 3 feet wide) just above it.

Weird design, but their house is old. The first couple of weeks, I was pretty jet lagged and Japan is hot and humid, so I didn't really sleep at night.

If my light was off at night though, I always felt uneasy about that small closet space. Something about it just felt darker than the rest of the room. Toward the end of the second week, I started to adjust to the time difference. One morning, I woke up and that small door was open. It was unsettling, but I closed it and just thought maybe it wasn't closed all the way and came loose.

A couple of nights later, I woke up feeling uneasy. It was dark and I could kinda see, and I could see that small door was open. It was much darker than the rest of the room; like black, pitch dark. This was the first and only time I experienced 'paralysis.' I was too scared to move, say, or do anything. I just felt this darkness coming from there.

I don't remember sleeping that night, but I must've because I remember waking up the next morning. I told my friend about it, who said his mom told him about something like that, too. When we got back home, and I talked to his parents, his mom kinda joked with me, 'So, I heard you met the ghost.'

5. From lefatcatmat:

When I was 6 I slept on a bunk bed in a room alone, the bottom bunk was empty (was meant for my younger brother but he was too scared of sleeping in a bed alone). So I was alone in that room that night, I remember a chilling feeling that night then it suddenly got really warm, probably because I was undergoing a night terror of some sort.

Then I start breathing heavily and open my eyes and see the room is empty. My little night light in the corner of the room comforts me back to sleep, except as I closed my eyes I felt a heavy hand petting my shoulder, my eyes rip open and there was no one in the room. As soon as I lay back down the petting continued and I covered my head just pretending to myself that it was my mom.

It took me 12 years to stop sleeping with my head under the covers because of that memory. My mom, of course, knew a woman passed away in that apartment before we moved in so she always believed it was that woman trying to comfort me.

6. From ablutomania:

Attended a school back in 2013-2014, that was so haunted I still don’t believe it. Me and many other students (but also some of the teachers working there), saw things go flying in the air, heard footsteps, were sometimes touched by something we couldn’t see.

We also had various new and expensive equipment (myself I had a iPhone 5 and a fully specced late 2012 iMac at the time) fail whenever the “ghost” entered the room we were in and so on. The various tech problems all disappeared as soon as I left the school and took my stuff back home with me btw.

The iMac still in use today by my uncle, and he experiences no issues with it to this date. So to my first serious experience at the school: One night I was alone with a girl at my student house (everyone else was partying down at the school building), when suddenly we started hearing footsteps from the attic upstairs.

It was a tiny room up there, that was only big enough for storing some tour and hiking equipment, like a few backpacks and such. After maybe half a minute or so, the footsteps started coming down the stairs from the attic. At this point, me and my friend went dead silent, and we were both just staring toward the door that went to the attic.

The footsteps came all the way down, and went into the living room where we were sitting. At this point, the sound of the footsteps, switched from sounding like someone walking around in big boots, into what to me sounded more like someone coming wet and barefoot out of the shower/tub.

When the sound got to the middle of the room (which was right in front of where me and this girl were sitting), it stopped, and for a few brief moments, there was nothing but dead silence. The girl and I just looked at each other for like 5-10 seconds, before my eyes caught something going on behind the girl's back.

We were sitting on a couch together, and behind her, were these huge windows that went from the floor and all the way up to the ceiling. They had some seriously huge blinds as well, and so I watched this pretty heavy lead thing that certain industrial blinds have, be lifted all the way up from the floor, to just above the middle of the window.

There it kept floating in the air for about 5 seconds, before it was punched into the window with such force, that I’m sure the window would’ve broke if it hadn’t been for those thick blinds protecting it. The girl didn’t see this as it happened behind her back, but you can be sure that she heard the noise.

In fact she got so scared that she literally jumped into my lap screaming. That’s the moment when I stopped trying to give possible “natural” explanations to everything paranormal.

7. From mikeytruelove:

My family's old house backed onto a pretty substantial, forested ravine. I slept on the ground-level floor, and my room was at the back of the house. On four separate occasions, over the span of 5 years, I saw a middle-aged man dressed in a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a red hat walk through my room with a dog leash in his hand.

He would briefly stop at the same spot every time, and look around, then keep walking towards the ravine. I should note that this was fairly new construction in a suburb of a small city, and all that had been there previously was forest. I think he lost his dog in the ravine at some point, and he was there trying to find it.

8. From malditotish:

At my mom's old apartment, I used to have this feeling I was always being watched. Then I was starting to wake up at 3:00 am consistently. On one of the nights I had woken up, I heard someone call out my name, it was a woman's voice but I didn’t recognize it.

She kept calling out my name and walking towards my bed getting closer but I didn’t see anything. I freaked out, jumped off my bed, and ran into my brother's room. I hopped into bed with him and tried waking him up. The punk sleeps like the dead he still sleeps like that.

I heard her footsteps follow me to his doorway. After that every time I woke up in the middle of the night I just ran into his room and slept on the top bunk(we had bunk beds). My mother still doesn’t believe that happened. Thankfully we only lived there for a couple of months then moved out.

9. From Fusion22:

My parents had flown to Houston when I was 11 years old to see a specialist for my dad’s lymphoma. It had just returned from remission but there was no reason to think he was in any imminent danger. I was riding my bike home the day they were to fly back, and stopped my bike in this ditch we used to ride down/up on our way back.

When I got to the top I felt a wave of emotion come over me and without even knowing what I was saying I told my friend I was riding with that my dad had just died. My friend was like, what? I just knew. I rode the rest of the way home to find my grandparents (my dad’s parents) bawling on our back porch.

I stood there watching them in the doorway for a few minutes unable to walk out to talk to them. He had died an hour before I got home from school. No phone calls to the school nor did I interact with anyone that knew prior to riding in the ditch.

I just knew when that wave came over me. Again, there was no reason to think he was even remotely close to passing. He had caught pneumonia while in Houston and died from that.

10. From ghentres:

My brother was on the phone once with his gf when she started saying that she could hear some old lady asking my brother for a glass of water. There was nobody around him so he ignored it but she kept on insisting. He hung up the phone and went to check on our grandma who was in her bedroom and found her dead.

Fast forward a couple of years, around 11pm, I was on the phone with a girl when I saw a guy on a bicycle go past (phone was by the windowsill. Same spot as my brother). That's when I noticed she stopped talking and asked her if she was still there. She apologized as she thought I got into trouble.

I said no and asked why she said that and she replied with someone was telling me to 'stop talking on the phone, it's late. Go to bed.' I was on my own, everybody in the house was already asleep. I asked her if it was an old lady and she said yes. Told her it's my grandma and that the same thing happened to my brother. She started talking about ghosts and stuff so I told her I'm hanging up and bolted into my room.

11. From sophlog:

I don’t believe in paranormal activity but my grandparent’s house is considered by many to be extremely haunted (it’s part of a tour of haunted houses in the LA area and according to legend was part of the inspiration for American Horror Story). There are tons of stories but the one I experienced myself was when I was living there as a child.

I was about 6 yo and my older sister was 12 and we shared a room. My mom had decorated our bedside table with an antique telephone that didn’t work and was not plugged in. My sister and I were asleep and for some reason, we both woke up at the same time and turned to face each other. I remember feeling an extreme feeling of dread. Then the phone rang in between us.

We locked eyes and both hid under our blankets til it stopped ringing. We both thought it was a dream because we didn’t say anything for years about it, then one day she was talking about it and we realized we had had the exact same experience. There are so many more stories but that’s the only one I experienced directly.

12. From coldshadow31:

At least once every couple of years, I'll be walking around the apartment at night, when it's dark, but I can still see enough to get around, and I'll have some shadow/figure type thing suddenly come out of nowhere and get right up in my face, so close that I can feel like I'm breathing on it. It disappears immediately after.

13. From AcademicNose7:

I was awoken one night to a loud crash in my bathroom. I went in and all of the things on my sink top were in the middle of the floor. I mean, about 3 ft away from the sink. Everything. Not just one thing fell over and knocked the other into the sink, but toothbrush, toothpaste, hair gel, face wash, e4, handsoap. All on the floor in the middle of the bathroom.

What was even worse is that between waking up and going to check out the bathroom, as I crossed the landing back to my room I noticed a light had come on downstairs. I went down and both the hall light and living room light were on, except none of the light switches were in the 'on' position. I had to click the switch on/off to make them switch off.

I was living on my own at the time and it freaked me out a little bit, but I'm still in the same house and have had no other experiences.

14. From Akibawashu:

I was young (around 6ish) and sleeping in my bedroom, I woke up extremely early like my brain making a Metal Gear '!' sound. In the center of my room was a man, he was blonde with messy hair, deep blue eyes, tannish, with sandals, torn denim shorts, and no shirt. Like a total surfer bro kind of look.

He stood there looking to the left towards the closed windows then at me and he smiles softly. He slowly places his finger to his lips and shakes his head slowly telling me to be quiet. I felt intense fear and closes my eyes tightly for a few seconds and when I open them he was gone. Neither footsteps, creaking, or any window or my door were opened. He was there then suddenly poof.

15. From laamargachica:

When I saw this thread I thought about my experience in Turkmenistan, for work. I was in the capital of Ashgabat, waiting for my apartment lease to be approved by the local council, so I had to stay at their hotel. For context, Turkmenistan is also one of the toughest countries to get into, and this was post-pandemic - so even their biggest hotel that used to house dignitaries was also empty and dusty.

I fell asleep after video calling my boyfriend. I was awoken with my duvet lifted from one edge - bringing half of it diagonally mid-air and almost wavy, all while hearing chants by a male voice in my left ear in a language I didn't understand.

It was so fast and rough. I tried reciting all the prayers / Quranic verses I could (I was born Muslim but I don't practice anymore) and it stopped for a short second, only to begin again with almost a mocking laughter in between the chants. At the same time, I could feel my left hand fingers being pulled repeatedly.

It ended as the sun rose - I immediately called my friend who was 3 hours ahead in timezone to just debrief and process what the f#%k just happened. Told this to some friends and local colleagues, and yes, they theorized some regional djinns. Of course, I checked the f#$k outta there that morning and moved into a staff boarding house. Most terrifying experience of my life.