There are times that things just happen with no explanation. Maybe it was meant to be or maybe it was something else? Welp, these people found themselves in similar situations and reveal what went down that left them dazed and confused. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Max Or Was It Something Else?
“About two years ago I had a lot of cats. Like, seven cats. Most of them were inside cats, but there were two males that weren’t allowed inside because, you know, they were more territorial and tended to pee on my stuff.
I lived about a block away from a cemetery. It is small, pretty much just for locals and people who died hundreds of years ago, it’s not really active. No one visits, really, the graves are a little dirty and decorated with little fake flowers that must have been placed there years ago, faded by the sun and weather. They look more like litter than anything, not attached to a grave so much as strewn in the general vicinity.
My grandma is resting there. I didn’t know her well, and we weren’t close, but she’s buried there with my great-grandmother. She died about two and a half years ago, in a nursing home after getting dementia. I never visited, I thought it was awkward and scary, she was withering away, and had no idea who I was at that point. Looking at her was like looking at death itself, and I stayed away. I regret it, it’s something that made me feel incredibly guilty, and I had many dreams about her afterward.
I barely remember anything I did during the day, only that one of the outside cats kept scratching at my back door for what seemed like hours. As it got nighttime, he only got more violent about it, scratching louder and rattling the hinges, so I finally checked up on him at around eleven when I was ready to sleep.
He calmed down the second I opened the door.
He was weird though, not meowing at all, just staring. He didn’t run inside like usual when I opened the door, it was like he was waiting. It was nice out, early November, but since it was Florida, not cold or anything. I had nothing to do, so I went outside with the cat, intending to give the little guy some attention. The cat’s name was Maxwell. He was a big muscular, black cat with green eyes, and he reminded me of ‘Toothless the dragon’ in appearance. He never shut up, it was like he would meow every three seconds on a loop, so I affectionately nicknamed him ‘Whiner’ and ‘Crybaby’. He would suck up attention as his life depended on it, he was almost like a dog. I even taught him to fetch.
When I tried to pet him though, he walked away, waiting for a foot or two ahead of me. I went through a few rounds of that before just following him, a little curious and expecting him to lead me to a dead bird or a lizard. Instead, he walked out of the yard, always a step ahead of me. Whenever I would stop, he’d wait, and look back at me with his big green eyes expectantly. He was always so noisy, but he hadn’t said anything at all for the whole walk. He seemed eerily serious, almost human. He took me to the end of the road and started heading towards the graveyard.
The closer I got, the more aware I was of where he was going. I tried to pet him, pick him up, and go back home, but he wasn’t listening to me. I felt weird, tense but excited. It was hard to tell myself I wasn’t dreaming, but I knew I wasn’t. I half expected it to be a full moon, but it was about a quarter shy of that, a perfectly normal but bright night. The graveyard was the same at night, all blue-toned from the night and the moon overhead, but still messy and silent as always. Maxwell went right inside and perched on a grave. It wasn’t anyone I knew; the person had lived and died before I was even born. The cat didn’t move though, so I sat near it and traced the carved words with my fingers. I read off the name written on the grave aloud, straightened up the flowers, and the cat finally seemed satisfied and moved onto another grave. And another. I followed the little ritual every time, Max wouldn’t move until I did. Upkeep, recognition, moving on.
I spent the better part of an hour there, scared I’d be caught by someone, or that I’d lose the black cat in the shadows, but he stayed mostly close, working his way through the graveyard. Cars passed by every once in a while, so I stayed low and tried to hide behind trees when they came. I guess someone saw me lurking in the place suspiciously, because a police car passed by after some time, and I decided that it was for me. There were pretty routine patrols, admittedly they could have just been passing through, but I couldn’t risk being arrested for trespassing.
I convinced the cat to come close and grabbed him. He wasn’t happy but I managed to hold onto him and hurry out of the area, him over my shoulder like a little kid. I tried to reason with Max, telling him it was late, it was illegal, and that I wanted to help but I didn’t know-how. The second I got out of the graveyard, he jumped back down, evading me, but he seemed to understand. He listened when I talked and followed me the fiveish minute walk home, this time by my heels. Every once in a while he would stop and look back, so I promised him that I would come back tomorrow, and he seemed satisfied.
I was shaky honestly. He didn’t seem like my cat at all, and I didn’t understand what had gone on. I thought maybe he wanted to take me to my grandmother, but I don’t know if I got close, or what would have happened if I didn’t have to leave. I went straight to talk to my sister, in an attempt to rationalize everything and convince myself it was real. I told her what happened, and she told me that it was November second now.
When I was outside with the cat, it was the first of November, All Saint’s Day, and the first day of Dia de Los Muertos. We spent a little bit talking, she helped me calm down and stop shaking, talking about a movie she’d watched.
Afterward, I spent the next day going back to the graveyard. I picked up flowers, righted little benches that fell over, and tried to pay respects to all the graves Max showed me, especially the one for my grandmother. I lit a little candle, left a little statue by her grave that she used to love, and properly said goodbye. Max went back to his usual self, meowing constantly, knocking things over, begging for treats. I let him stay inside for that day and gave him a lot of attention.
Max died a year ago in July, and I was out of town for that year’s Day of the Dead, so I didn’t get to know if anything would have happened again.”
Camping Chaos
“A few months ago, a group of friends rented out a block of campsites near an amusement park. I got there Friday afternoon, but a few of my friends had already been there since the night before. Several more friends came in around dinner, then they were setting up their tents in the far campsite.
I was nursing a headache and laid down on the bench of a picnic table. Just past this was a sloping path through the woods which lead to the bathroom/ showers. A huge floodlight was on the side of the building, and it illuminated the path, which was at max 50 yards long. My buddy Tim walked past me, asking if I was ok, and headed up to the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later, I opened my eyes and saw the silhouette of Tim walking towards me. He is a tall, lanky guy who wears a hat and walks with an odd gate. He is easy to recognize, even in silhouette. For some reason, looking at him, I had this weird feeling of dread that I at first couldn’t explain. I watched him for a moment or so, and realized that although he was moving like he was walking, he didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
I sat up at this point and looked closer. Everything was wrong with what I was seeing. First of all, the combo of the floodlights from the bathroom and the little light left from sunset meant that the trees and plants were all casting long shadows, but things were still visible. Tim though, was just a black void, not contour or shadow on him. It was like someone had taken a one-dimensional cut out of him and filled it in black. Secondly, he was making a walking motion, but it was like he wasn’t moving forward or getting closer, just repeating the same walking motion. Third, and most odd, it was like he was superimposed onto the scenery. The size of the shadow meant he seemed close, but for his feet to be touching the sloping ground, he would have to be closer to the bathroom, and 20 feet tall. It was like a bad 80s green screen where the figure doesn’t quite fit.
I watched this with increasing terror and called over to my friend Michael. He was smoking a cig and walked over, looked up at the shadow, and sort of froze, staring. The black shadow of Tim never got bigger or closer, but it did start to walk more urgently. Not running, but the steps seemed to be getting faster and more deliberate, the arms swinging more. I kept feeling this inexplicable level of terror and dread, but it was like I couldn’t break away from looking. I felt like I was held, transfixed.
We stood there for several long minutes, (long enough for Michaels half-smoked cig to turn to ash) when Katie, Michaels’s girlfriend, came up to talk to him. She asked what we were looking at and when neither of us answered, she turned and looked at Tim’s shadow. It only held her for a minute though, before she freaked out and started yelling that we needed to go back to the tent. She broke whatever pull Michael and I felt, and we followed her across the camp. I felt cold, pins and needles, and we rushed quickly into the campground where two of our friends were in their tent and came out to see what the yelling was. Michael and I were trying to collect ourselves and started to try to explain that we had seen something weird when Tim comes out of the tent.
Now, the owners of the tent were equally shocked because they had just been in their empty tent, so they thought Tim was playing a prank on them. But Tim was sweaty and out of breath and said that a weird thing happened to him. He had somehow gotten lost coming back from the bathroom, and felt like he ‘walked forever.’ He didn’t know how he found the camp or gotten in the tent.
He sat down and we started to all talk at once, our friends still thought it was a prank and adrenaline meaning we weren’t making much sense when Tim vomited and complained of being cold. He was burning up to the touch and seemed to just suddenly be extremely ill. Someone took him to the hospital where they found he had a ridiculously high fever and diagnose the flu, so they held him overnight.
Michael and I investigated the walk up to the bathroom and found it took all of 45 seconds to walk from down the path, and there was no weird light play when you were watching someone come from the bathroom to the campsite. Nothing weird happened the rest of the trip.
Now, the explanation for all this that a friend came up with was that Tim had a fever, went to the bathroom, and got disorientated and lost. Somehow while lost he stood perfectly to create a weird shadow effect that lasted five minutes, (and possibly Michael and I were unwell too, referring to my headache). Feverish and delirious Tim bumbled into the campsite and through the flap of the just vacated tent just in time for his magical reappearance. Tim now says he remembers nothing of the trip from dinner time on but blames this on the fever. Michael considers it an alien experience
Frankly, I don’t know what happened, but what I don’t think that explains what I felt and saw. I’ve had a few weird experiences happen before that and since that, including one other instance of someone who seemed ‘unstuck’ from the right time and place.”
Highway I-80
“Back in 2005, I was in a band that toured the country in a 15 passenger van with a trailer. We were on the way from Columbus Ohio to Erie Pennsylvania. The show had been canceled in Ohio due to a power outage, so we decided to get on the road early as we had friends in Erie, Pennsylvania, who were taking us in for the night.
While on I-80, about 25 minutes outside of Erie, I’ll never forget this moment for the rest of my life. We were all pretty much alert and actively having a conversation. There were eight of us total in the van when the driver and passenger both shouted simultaneously, ‘What the freak was that?!’
I was sitting being the driver with my back against the window and I didn’t see anything but we heard a ‘whooshing’ noise as if something flew right over the van. My friend who was sitting next to me looked like he had just seen a ghost. We wound up pulling over on the side of the road because everyone was freaking out, thinking we hit something. Nothing was found. Both the passenger and driver said they saw a tall black figure lunge at the van from the shoulder of the left lane, my friend who was sitting next to me said the same thing.
No, I don’t think they were all playing a hoax on the unknowing members, because I know these guys and they were scared.
We arrived at our destination and the house we were staying at power was also out. The next day we inspected the van in daylight and noticed there were streak marks across the roof of the van. Our van was white and also very dirty due to touring the entire country. Still to this day, we don’t know what we witnessed. We’ve done some research on it and similar reports have happened in and around the same area. I was reading the book, ‘The Mothman prophecies’ around the time of that tour as well and I’m quite convinced we had an encounter with the unexplained.”
Uhm, Who Was Sarah?
“A few years ago, I still had an old slider phone. One day, I got a random call asking for some girl named ‘Sarah.’ I told them they had the wrong number and they intermediately hung up. For the next few months, I would get these calls asking for Sarah about once or twice a week coming from different numbers and different sounding people. Sometimes these calls came at three in the morning.
Well, one day I got a call and like usual I said I didn’t know Sarah, and after they hung up, I went to my contacts and hit redial. After I did, the machine took over and said that number did not exist. I went back through my call history trying to call some other people that had called me with the same result, a machine telling me the number did not exist. Every time I would get these calls I would redial the number and still got the machine. I googled the numbers but all I learned was they were coming from North Dakota, Montana, basically everywhere in the Midwest which wasn’t all that weird because I lived there.
I started wondering what was going on so the next time I got a call asking for Sarah, I said, ‘Oh yeah, she is right here.’
And the other person on the other end said, ‘No, she isn’t,’ and hung up.
Then things started getting weird when I started getting calls from ‘unknown’ numbers calling me. Whoever or whatever on the other end hung up the second I said ‘Hello.’ The creepiest one I ever got was from a call I got where they didn’t hang up after I said hello, I could hear someone was on the other end just listening but they didn’t say anything, just something really uneasy about it. Eventually, I switched phones and got a smartphone and I immediately stopped getting calls. I haven’t gotten a single random call in about three years now despite the fact I still have my old number from the old phone.”
Her Mom Called The Cops And It Was A Good Thing She Did
“I was 12-13. We had just moved to the United Kingdom from Texas the year before. We moved into the really nice farmhouse in the south of England near Wilton. We were completely alone for at least three miles in each direction.
The first thing that happened was in our kitchen. It was a large room with light fixtures in the ceiling. Those lights were flickering one night and I was just staring at them. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a girl, she was wearing a white dress with her hand on the window. Scared the heck out of me. So I jumped back and tried to put my focus on her, but when I tried, she was gone and in that instant, the glass of the light fixture fell.
The second thing was slightly more terrifying. I was home alone, it was raining that night. Mom was out somewhere (friends I think) and I was just watching TV. It was about nine pm and I could hear scratching, not like a dog scratching the door to go out, like a long continuous scratch.
So I looked around the house and I saw nothing. I sat back down to watch TV and I heard it again, but it sounded like it was outside so I darted out the back door to have a look. Maybe a tree in the bad weather? But I saw nothing again.
I came back inside and the TV was off and the front door unlocked. I shat myself. I ran to get a kitchen knife and my mom’s old phone. I hid in the office that was on the ground floor and texted my mom and told her what was going on.
She called the cops, and they arrived. They had a look around and saw wet boot prints that walk in through the front door, led into the kitchen, and then stopped with no exit footprints.”
Chat Room
“When I was around 10 years old (we’re talking about 2002 here) I used to hang around a lot in certain chat rooms. One day I met a guy, who would show to be very unique. It started out with normal conversation, but soon I learned that he could do things I could not possibly explain, even though I found myself pretty smart for my age.
It was a normal chat room, with no webcam, microphone, or whatever was involved. I was able to speak to my screen, and he was able to write his response back. This was how we spent most of our time. But it didn’t stop at this. I used to test him doing mind games, like thinking about a number in my head, and he would guess them correctly, not failing once. I even remember that after a successful strike I thought about ‘infinite,’ and he went like, ‘That’s not fair, infinite is way too large!’
Anyhow, I was flabbergasted. I tried to tell my parents, but I think they thought it was a child’s imagination and eventually ignored it. I remained skeptical though so I constantly tried to test him. He could even tell me that my parents were watching ‘Mr. Bean’ on the television, which was correct. Or that if I thought about the red curtains upstairs, he would correct me since they were blue.
I could not explain how he was doing it, but he could see me, hear me, and read my thoughts with no error. He even gave me a mail address, but foolish me never saved it. We spent some time, later the chat-room was disbanded and we never saw each other again.
I’ve always been a skeptic, even at that young age. To this day I still have no clue what exactly happened.”
Another Time Vortex
“Ten years ago, I used to work at Blockbuster. The store where I worked was open late on the weekends until 11 pm. We had to stay and do at least one to two hours of closing duties. Most weekend nights I worked, I wouldn’t get home until one a.m. or later.
One Friday night, I’d worked late and was on my way home. I lived really close to the store and had a short drive. I was randomly switching through the radio stations at a red light and decided to switch over to the AM stations which was something I never did. I had the tuner on and got nothing but static for a few stations. Then I picked up a station that was playing some creepy swing music. It was coming in perfectly clear. The music itself wasn’t creepy but it was something about it that set me on the edge. I blame the fact it was past one am.
I got home and kept the radio on that station. The next day I got in my car to go to work and that station was just static. The same thing later that night. I kept looking for that station for several years until I moved away and I’ve never found it again. I’m sure it was just something to do with the radio towers/signals that day but I want to think I somehow stumbled into a time vortex.”
Grandma’s House
“My grandma has a very stereotypical horror movie house in a small Midwest town; white and old looking home, on a farm. She even has a chipped wooden mother Mary nativity in the front yard (you get the picture). The worst is she has a cemetery about a half-mile down the road.
Anyways, I used to sleep in the room in the corner on the top floor (my aunt’s room) and it had a wooden rocking chair in it. When I was younger, I would wake up because I thought I heard it rocking, to the point where I would wake up my grandma and have to stay in her room.
Well, about 10 years later my mom, aunt, and I during thanksgiving were talking about how creepy grandma’s house was. My aunt went on to talk about how when she was younger the reason my mom and her ended up sharing a room was because she thought her room was haunted. She said she woke up one morning and the rocking chair was about two feet closer to her bed, and after that night it would start rocking on a nightly basis at midnight.
Freaked me out.”
Mystery Bathroom Man
“I was out running errands and pulled into a grocery store. I had to pee, but the grocery store has a unisex bathroom near the entrance so I figured I’d just use that. As I was walking out of my car toward the entrance, I was overtaken by an older gentleman in a tan overcoat. I was a pretty fast walker, but this guy was clearly in a hurry. I was following maybe 10-15 feet behind him into the store, and sure enough, he beelined it for the bathroom. He stepped in and quickly shut the door.
OK, fine, clearly this guy had to go more than I did. So I waited. A couple of minutes passed. Then five minutes passed.
I thought, ‘Seriously dude?’
I really had to pee at this point and was getting impatient. Ten minutes passed. To be honest, at this point I was kind of concerned. I knocked on the door. No answer. Maybe he didn’t hear me? I knocked again. Still nothing.
I waited a couple more minutes, then checked the door handle. He didn’t lock it. I opened the door and the restroom was empty.
I seriously watched that guy enter the bathroom and close the door. There was one way out, and I was standing right in front of it. Short of false memory in my brain, to this day I can not explain what happened to Mystery Bathroom Man.”
Under The Bed
“This happened when I was just about four years old. We lived in a really small apartment that had two rooms. When you entered our room, you could just see the kitchen and there was a doorway on the left which was our bedroom.
I was playing in the bedroom and got my slipper stuck under the bed. I couldn’t seem to get it since there was only a two-inch gap under the bed. I didn’t know what got into me but I started chanting something like, ‘Slipper, get out now,’ over and over again. Then I got this feeling of dread and I got scared so I got to our front door where my mom was at. Then I started chanting again.
After a few minutes, I snuck to the bedroom and found my slipper a foot away from the bed. I ran inside to get it and got out as fast as I can.
I was speculating on how it happened. As a little girl with an overactive imagination, I just assumed a rat passed by, heard me, and just pushed my slipper out of there”