Ask Lemmy

Happened when I was kid, mid teens. I was playing Diablo at night, and remember being kinda on edge, since I wasn't supposed to - so I was keeping an eye and an ear on the house.

So, I'm slaying it in Baal Runs, and see something move across the doorway of the study, and just feel caught. It must have been mom, and I'm caught - since it was this average-height white figure, wearing a night gown. And no-one else is at home.

I leave the room and look left to moms bedroom and hear her snoring. There's no-one up inside the house, and no-one has crossed the doorway back into my mums bedroom.

This wasn't the only weird, spooky thing to have happened in that house, but it is the only one where I was strictly awake.

I was 11 yrs old and a shopkeeper in his 30s came from behind the counter to where I was standing, gave me the things I was buying, traced my jawline and said he'd be waiting for me to visit him tomorrow, promising me "a nice surprise".

I ran for my life and never returned. Wtf

One summer night in highschool, I swear someone broke into our house and tried to enter my bedroom. I heard a rumbling downstairs at around 3 am when I was settling into bed after a long night of gaming downstairs. I initially thought it was a family member, but I started to get suspicious when I thought I heard my dad snoring through the door between the subtle chaos developing downstairs. As I opened the door slightly to see what was up, I heard something come running up the stairs. No one in my family would come running up wooden stairs at 3am when everyone was sleeping, so I instinctively shut the door as fast as I could. As I finished shutting the door, something or someone started pushing back to seemingly try and break into my room. I swear I held that door and fought back from these aggressive pushes for at least a minute until they stopped. I held that door close in a panic for what seemed like 15 additional minutes panicking about all the possibilities. Keep in mind, this was all happening after a recent murder in the town over that took place earlier that year. So, my young mind thought the worst.

Eventually I gathered the courage to open that door and run to my parent's room to alert them. My Dad and I ran downstairs to see what was going on, but there was NO trace of anything or *anyone * inside. We looked everywhere but the only thing weird was an unlocked but fully closed window.

This absolutely made me terrified for the rest of the summer and I was unable to sleep for almost a whole week afterwards. We never found out what happened or if it was even real! I still think about it to this day years later.

I was driving down a long, straight backroad one evening after a late shift. It was dark but could see a mile ahead with the headlights, it was so clear and nice out. I see in the distance a woman walking on the side of the road in a dress and heeled shoes. Nothing fancy, just like a dress one would wear to work. And she's walking in the opposite direction. The thing is I only really saw her lower half because of the angle of the lights. But I kept an eye out for her so I could give her space and maybe slow down and see if she was ok.

As my vehicle passed her and she left my headlights, I lost sight of her immediately. I came to a complete stop, looked around like a madman, but I could not see her anywhere. I looped around back in my car and drove a mile up and down that road a few times. There were no bushes or ditches for her to have hidden in. It's like the moment she left the light, she vanished, and again I never saw anything but the legs.

I haven't had anything creepy happen to me personally that I can recall, but I do have something that did terrify me for a bit.

This was around a year ago but I was in the bathroom washing my hands after using the bathroom, this was very late at night, about 2:00am. That's when I heard some sort of noise that caught my interest. I was wearing noise-cancelling headphones so I was surprised that I heard this. I took them off and heard nothing afterwards, so I just chalked it up to my mind playing tricks and went back to my bedroom.

However, the sound did sit with me. It's one of those sounds that is engraved in your intuition. So I went to check the camera footage around the time that I heard the sound. I went back a couple of minutes and played back the footage, waiting to hear anything. After going through a few minutes, I was ready to give up on it, since it was just wind noise and distant traffic. That's when I heard this absolutely most long horrific blood curdling scream that I have ever heard in my life. It sounded like a woman and it genuinely made me freeze for a good few seconds.

I was in absolute shock and didn't know what to do about it. I sent it to the local police station and they said they'll investigate to see if anything came up around that time. I checked the news for a few days after in the local area and nothing about a murder or domestic violence incident came up. This area is usually pretty safe, so it was definitely a shock.

So this happened to me one time when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My brother and I shared a room upstairs at my dad’s place. At this house, we had a family dog who was predominantly an outdoor dog who rarely came inside and certainly was never allowed to sleep inside.

One time, at the dead of night, I woke up to hearing footsteps that sounded like my dog quickly running up the stairs. Being tired and young, I just assumed my father had let the dog inside the house. However, I could not see what it was since it was extremely dark in the room. But anyways, I pet it and it licked my hand. I then heard it run to my brother’s bedside and he woke up to pet it too. Soon after, it ran down the stairs and left.

Fast-forward to the morning, my brother and I were eating breakfast with our dad. As we all chatted, I asked dad why he let the dog in over night. He responded by saying: “I didn’t let the dog in the house and noted how the doors were all locked.” (which made sense as my dad religiously locks doors). I told him about what happened: he said it must have been a dream. My brother interjected saying: “I experienced it too.” My dad’s face dropped and he became visibly freaked out.

To this day, I have zero explanation for what occurred that night and what thing I pet. It's easily the creepiest experience I can recall.

Edit: fix

When I was 13 at church camp, a church official videoed me changing clothes once.

That was pretty creepy.

I tried doing a paper route in a small town back when I was a fresh from high school teen. It was the early aughts when all those teen horror movies were coming out. Early, early in the morning enough to be considered late at night from the previous day, I was driving down a dirt road all alone. My music was blasting so as to stave off the loneliness of being one of maybe (If I'm being generous) 3 people awake in the surrounding 50 miles of small-town nothingness. As I was driving down this dirt road to the next part of my route, the road went from clear to a dense fog that rivaled the comical bits in tv shows where the stoners are hot boxing & you don't know they are in the car until they open the door and get out.

That was when I saw it.

The longest redlight ever at the entrance to a single-lane covered bridge that ended somewhere in the fog. I couldn't just ignore the red light and drive across the bridge because I couldn't see if there was a car at the other end. There was no other end to be seen. But I also didn't want to sit there at the red light in the middle of nowhere feeling unseen eyes peering menacingly at me through the fog.

My husband's grandpa cared for his wife through many years of Alzheimers. She mostly existed, unresponsive, in a chair in the front room, slowly losing the ability to even breathe or swallow. I imagine she suffered a lot, unable to function in a shell that was determined to rid itself of her and living with a caretaker who had to watch that decline and grew frustrated as slowly, slowly his wife became less and less. When he finally decided to release her, she was given no food or water in order to facilitate her passing, and then, finally, she was gone. He stayed in the house for a few more years until my husband and I decided to purchase it from him, after which he left for Florida.

Our first move as new homeowners was to get a dog, a black lab puppy whose previous owners had returned because she had too much energy. They weren't wrong, but we'd already fallen in love and thus accepted our doom. She wanted to play 12 hours a day, destroyed any toy that wasn't solid rubber, and had no concept of how much damage her teeth and claws could cause. Toys were ripped to shreds and any attempt to tire her out just made her stronger. We spent hours throwing her ball up the stairs and if we left she would choose destruction: books, my oil paints, a painting, remotes, the couch, tools, shoes, other art supplies, the rug, two lamps, the wood frame of the door . . . We'd put down cayenne pepper, lemon, anything with a gross taste, but it didn't matter, she'd eat it anyways. Eventually we just resorted to food-wrapper decoys, which only partially quelled her urges for obliteration, but it was something, at least. So when her favorite rubber ball went missing we just assumed she somehow (nevermind the exact 'how' you would ask of normal creatures) ripped it apart and we'd find the pieces eventually.

Meanwhile, I could feel something . . . off about the house. Sometimes it felt like I was being watched, staying up late I would get a chill, the place would smell like sandalwood (his grandma's favorite smell, my husband later told me), and it just felt, well, sad and lonely. I voiced my disquiet but my husband dismissed me, he didn't sense anything weird and ghosts aren't real, anyways. Obviously.

And then one night our dog, locked in the bedroom with us, started barking, practically yelling for us to wake up, wake up, something's wrong. Usually I, the light sleeper, would be up immediately, but instead it was my husband, usually so deep asleep it was like he was dead, who groggily awakened. My dog started pawing at the bedroom door, desperate to get out, and he dragged himself up and opened it. She rushed into the living room, still barking, her attention now focused on our much-used, constantly-searched-under coffee table. My husband then watched as her missing ball rolled out from underneath it, as if some lonely old woman was playing fetch. Our dog grabbed the ball and ran back into the bedroom and he quickly followed, slamming the door shut.

Once he told me, I opened all the windows and doors and told his grandma, kindly and politely, that we were sorry but it was time to leave, even if we appreciated her help in keeping the dog entertained. We haven't smelled sandalwood since, but somehow my husband still doesn't believe in ghosts.

This was when i was around 12.

I was walking back up my driveway after bringing the garbage cans out to the road late at night and I saw this ... dark shadowy creature walking down the driveway towards me.

Then It started running towards me.

I let out the most primal guttural scream ive ever heard and that Dog slipped and fell mid run trying to turn and run the other way from me

I assume it was a dog. Ran inside real quick after.

For me... it's whenever I see a single shoe or a single sock just laid there on the floor. Especially from an adult. It always gets me thinking "What event could possibly result in someone leaving a single shoe or sock behind?"

I was at work very early one morning.

At the time I was in a basement office. My office was at the back of a small suite of offices.

I have a treadmill desk, and I had it set up with the bank of the desk facing the door. I had a camera on the back of my monitors so I could see if someone ever walked into my office, since I couldn't see past the monitors. The camera feed was displayed in a window on the top left corner of the leftmost monitor.

Two things happened.

First, while I was at the desk, a bunch of brooms that were leaning against the corner of the wall next to the door to the suite fell over. That was a little weird, since the office was in a basement, the walls are cinder block walls, and the floor was the concrete foundation of the three story building. For something to shake the wall enough for stuff to fall over, it would have to have been massive, but I didn't feel anything and when I checked the hallway outside, there was nothing there.

I went back to my desk and got back to work. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone move across the view of my camera. However, there was no one else in the suite.

Even that wouldn't be too creepy, except a few years earlier one of my coworkers had died in the office. He had been there several days before he was found.

This happened a few months ago when I went to Iceland. One night, me and some other people drove out to a relatively remote part of Reykjavik to try and see the aurora since the conditions were really good. We were standing there just looking at it (we did end up seeing it), when we heard what sounded like a woman screaming from the woods nearby. We noped out almost immediately and drove away, but I still regret not checking it out. I'm appending a photo I took there to add to the creep factor.

Bonus story, although this one isn't really that creepy. This was on the first day of a summer camp I went to. I went to sleep a little earlier, since I was really tired, and as I'm lying still, trying to fall asleep, I hear this girl I was sharing my tent with enter. I didn't really know her since it was the first day. Then I feel something like a hand on my cheek/the side of my head. I'm freaking out at this point, but I didn't wanna turn around since it would be really awkward. Then I feel the "hand" move away in a really unusual way. I turn to look what it is and it's a FUCKING TOAD. Damn I'm an idiot.

A boy in the street, who must have been about 8 years old, looked me up and down in a reeeally pervy way and said "You're fit, you", again in a reeeally pervy way. It was weird, and unsettling. (Fit = hot in the UK).

At uni, went into a washroom, saw a guy sitting on the floor bottomless, holding a cell phone taking self-portrait of his private part. The guy saw me and immediately rushed out of the washroom

When someone tried to break into my house with a crowbar in the middle of the night while my parents were on vacation (I was 16 at the time). The person could luckily not enter the door. Who knew what the goal of this person was.

Not my stories but on the first night my mom's grandpa passed away, she heard someone mixing hot chocolate in the kitchen. Her grandpa used to make hot chocolate every morning before he passed. Kinda creepy but in a way, but comforting to think that her grandpa came home one last time to reminisce before moving on.

Another one happened to my friend as he was walking home late with a group of friends and they had to pass by some dark streets with little to no light and a lot of trees. Suddenly, my friend who kinda has a sense for supernatural stuff came to a sudden stop and told the others not to look up. Naturally, the rest looked up. And lo and behold, they came face to face with a floating head of a lady glowing bright as day staring back at them. They immediately high tailed back to the nearest house and stayed there till sunrise.

When I was much younger, my family went to spend some time with my uncle and his children. My uncle's wife had died in a horrific accident a year or so before, and one of the kids had been in the car at the time. I didn't believe in ghosts then, and still have a hard time believing in the supernatural even after this. But let me tell you, her room was spooky AF. It had all the stereotypical poltergeist activity: the door's handle would MOVE, then the door would fly open, shake, then slam shut OVER AND OVER. Things would move around the room when you weren't looking. Things would move WHILE you were looking (pieces of your clothing). Bangs would chase you from one side of the room to another. I found out later that poltergeists are apparently attracted to disturbed children, and my cousin was obviously having a really difficult time. I've never experienced anything like that since, thank goodness. Give me the oogies just thinking about it.

One time when I was probably 8 or 9 my neighbors had this outside dog. It went in sometimes, but slept outside. But one night they left a window unlocked, and they had a Sega Genesis, so I climbed through the window to play. The dad woke up so I bolted up the stairs into some kid's room, and went to dive under the bed, but this kid just starts PETTING me. I didn't know what to do I just licked their hand. Spent the whole night in fear until finally getting the courage to sneak back out.