These 22 Real-Life Ghost Stories Will Have You Diving Under The Covers
Whether you're a bonafide ghost hunter or a serious skeptic, it's fun to let yourself get spooked by a real-life haunting story.
Paramount Pictures / Via giphy.com
So, a mystery redditor (with a since-deleted account) asked the people: "Redditors who have lived in a 'haunted' house, what are your most unexplainable paranormal experiences?"
And the tales came pouring in. This is a bit of a long read, so strap in...and be sure to keep the lights on! I recommend checking out the full thread and specific comments for more details/debunking. Now, onto the hauntings!
1."My uncle's house out on a very eastern part of New York was said to be haunted because the family that used to own it in the 1800s decided not to give it to the stableman and sold it instead. He and the maid were said to have haunted the place. We always used to joke that you would hear people or things moving at night, but since the house is so old, we used to just laugh it off."
"My uncle's friend and her sister stayed over one night, and the friend noticed a maid bringing towels down the stairs when she woke. She saw the maid again, bringing what looked like a percolator, down the stairs.
She was so impressed by my uncle hiring staff (he is a neurologist in NYC, so he had a habit of spending a little bit extra). She went back to bed and woke up and later came downstairs to see my uncle and his friend just chatting.
She asked where the maid went, and thought that the maid was cooking breakfast. My uncle had no idea what she was talking about and asked what she looked like. The sister explained and he laughed. Walked her to the living room and pointed to an old picture. She said that was the woman.
My uncle replied, 'Yeah, she has been dead for about 100 years.'"
2."My grandparents have a helpful ghost. Their house was built in the 1860s, and they've lived in it since the late 1960s. Over the years, various family members have heard the vacuum cleaner turn on on its own and clothes and towels that were dropped on the floor before bed have been folded and placed at the foot of the bed by morning. "
"In an intense burst of procrastination one day, I looked up every mention of their address in their town's online newspaper archives and found out that the family that built the house had a daughter who grew up there, never married, and took care of her widowed father until she later died of old age. So I figure the helpful ghost is just the daughter continuing to take care of people like she did for her entire life."
3."We had ghosts in an old house that I lived in as a child. While being home alone, I could hear sweeping downstairs. Also, the tinkling of china and crystal from the dining room; it sounded like a party was happening and you could hear a Victrola. I walked downstairs and it all stopped."
4."I lived in a house for about five years that was haunted, but not in a malicious way. In a 'shitty roommate' kind of way. I'd come home to the windows on the second floor being open when it was raining. To food containers being open in the fridge that I hadn't touched yet.?"
Eva / Via giphy.com
"The worst was that the 'ghost' hated clocks. She hated them. I had antique cuckoo clocks that had worked for 50 years that would just stop. Brand-new wall clocks that ate through batteries like candy. My watch ended up on the floor one morning, the crystal shattered, even though I knew I slept with it on. The one that pissed me off the most was that I got a brand-new Kit-Cat clock for Christmas —and the bitch threw it off the wall. I was cooking and out of the corner of my eye saw the cat freaking FLY. Turned around and it was across the kitchen. Broken. It was brand new!? Man, she was a bitch."
5."I lived in an old, haunted house in college. Things got so weird that everyone moved out except for me and one roommate."
Here's a few:
1. I woke up at 3 a.m. because my roommate's door kept opening and slamming shut. From bed, I yelled for him to stop only to realize I was the only one home that weekend. As soon as I yelled the slamming stopped, but the hippie beads I had hanging outside my closed door began to sway perfectly, yet violently, against the door frame for a half hour, while I debated if I should pop out my air-conditioning unit and jump out of the window. I laid in the fetal position in bed till it stopped.
2. I woke up at 3 a.m., alone again, hearing the Nintendo on the back porch playing loudly. I figured a drunk kid came in and started playing. I grabbed a bat and walked toward the back of the house as the music got louder and louder. As soon as I opened the door, it was completely quiet. Mind you it was loud enough to wake me up.
3. I had friends over and told them the house was haunted. No one believed me, so I asked the ghost to do anything to prove it was there. As soon as I asked, all the lights in the house began flickering for about a minute straight. This was the middle of the day; everyone witnessed it.
4. Almost everyone who stayed at my house had sleep paralysis at least once in the house.
5. Every time something spooky happened, the house would smell like old-lady, flowery, strong perfume.
6. This house had a door built into the flooring that led to the basement. We always had a rug covering it up so no one knew it was there. Things would constantly go missing in the house, and turn up in the basement. This house had a coal chute from when it was heated by coal back in the day. Missing stuff would always be placed on the shoot for us to come and get.
7. Roommate had some issues. Once while playing video games late at night, he saw mist kind of hovering from the kitchen and then move into the bathroom. The bathroom had a trap door that led to the attic; that's where we figured the old-lady ghost used to like to hang out.
8. Roommate was up late; he went to go lock the doors and turn off lights. When he turned his back on the room and walked to the door, someone breathed into his ear, "Haaa." He thought it was me. I was sleeping. He turned around, pissed himself, and ran to his room. He was too afraid to come out and turn off lights and TV.
9. Loud thumps in attic at all hours. For peace of mind, we told ourselves squirrels must've gotten in there.
10. Voices would wake us up in the middle of the night. I spent many mornings on the front porch waiting for the sun to come up before I went back in the house.
11. Coincidentally, I had a friend years later that rented from the same landlord (same town, different house) where he and all of his roommates moved out because that house was also haunted. I didn't think it was too weird, until he was telling me that when all of the weird stuff happened, it was accompanied by old-lady, flowery, stanky perfume. Also, a lot of people had sleep paralysis in that house as well."
6."I had a one-bedroom apartment once, and as soon as it got dark enough outside, this old dude would walk from the bedroom to the bathroom all night. I would have to warn people the first time they came over: "You are gonna see a ghost." Mid-conversation, people would stop talking and be like, 'HOLY SHIT, I just saw a ghost!' Yeah, no shit, I warned you."
"One time, I was in the bathroom when he attempted to walk in and just dissolved into a mist that dissipated very quickly. My current house I share with my wife is a three-bedroom and we sleep on a futon in the living room because the ghosts in this house were chainsmokers in the main bedroom. We wake up every night between 3 and 3:30 a.m. if we sleep on the second floor, coughing our lungs out because the room is full of cigarette smoke."
7."I watched one of our cats being pulled backward about 5 feet by her tail. She was walking through the dining area and suddenly was sliding backward, as if someone was pulling her by her tail. Only there wasn't anyone. She freaked out and tried to run, but couldn't immediately as something held on for a brief second before letting her go."
"I tend to think that was the handy work of a 4- or 5-year-old girl ghost who hangs out, and she just wanted to play with the kitty."
8."I get sleep paralysis occasionally. It usually feels like someone has me by the throat and is pushing me into the bed. I've never seen the crazy demon that people talk about seeing though. Mind you, I did see someone who looked exactly like myself sitting on the edge of the bed during an episode one night when I'd fallen asleep with the lights on. I couldn't really make out her face (although I could tell she was concerned, almost), and she was wearing one of my favorite T-shirts that I'd owned for over 12 years."
"I don't really wear that T-shirt anymore because of it."
9."Closest I've got to a haunted house is a haunted room: I used to sleep on the second floor (the bottom one being the first) and my sister in the attic. She used to have sleep paralysis often. Then she moved out, and now I have her old room."
DownsFilms / Via giphy.com
"She no longer has sleep paralysis, but I do."
10."I lived in a house that seemed to be haunted by 'doppelgangers.' Every event that happened never involved some mysterious figure, but a known person being in a place where they should not have been."
"Here are a few examples. I was a teenager at the time, and I was instant-messaging my GF at the time with my webcam turned on. I had the viewer up so that I could see myself in the webcam. Behind me, there were the stairs leading up (left of camera view) and the entrance to the living room (right of camera view). My younger sister would typically fall asleep every night on the couch in front of the TV and make her way up to bed in the middle of the night. At one point in my webcam view, I saw my sister leave the living room and go up the stairs. The thing that struck me as odd was that I didn't hear anything. It was an older Victorian house, so the wooden floor and stairs were loud AF. Without saying anything to my girlfriend, I got up and looked into the living room, and there was my sister passed out on the couch. I sat back down and asked my girlfriend if she had seen anything in my camera. She said, 'Yeah, I just saw your sister go upstairs.'
My family was all getting ready to go somewhere. I was sitting in the car with my mom, and we were waiting on my sister, who was still in the house. After a bit, she comes out and gets in the car and just looks at me like, 'WTF?' I ask her what's wrong, and she says that just before she walked out of the house she thought I was still inside so she yelled up the stairs, '1LT_0bvious, we're leaving!' and apparently 'I' yelled back, 'OK, I'll be down in a minute!'"
11."My grandfather had a very similar story to the doppelganger one. He was in bed, reading before going to sleep, and he saw my grandmother (his wife) walk past the bedroom in a nightgown. He thought that was odd because she never wears a nightgown. A couple minutes later, she walked in the room from the same side of the hallway that she walked from earlier and got in bed. He asked why she changed into those clothes out of her nightgown right before bed. She said, 'Hon, I don’t wear nightgowns.'"
"The other story he told me was a computer they had that was in the middle of a large circular table in the basement. They heard a big crash from the basement and naturally ran down to check it out. He computer was on the floor, broken. To this day he insists it could not have fallen on its own, as it was in the middle of the table."
12."When I was younger, my parents would frequently go run errands in the neighboring city and be gone most of the day from morning to night. Our living room was in a spot where you would have to walk through it to get from the back door to reach either the front door or my parents' room. You would walk between the couch and the TV while doing so. So I was home alone, and my dad came through the back door, walked in front of me as he crossed the room, and entered his and my mom's room. Then he came back out, walked across my field of vision once again, and left through the back door. He didn't look at me, look at the TV, or really do anything besides walk across the room in both directions."
"When I asked him what he came home for or if he forgot something, he honestly had no clue what I was talking about. They were an hour and a half away and coming home for something they forgot would not have made much sense. He was also wearing different clothes when I spoke with him compared to when I 'saw' him earlier. Such a strange experience, and I only saw it that one time."
13."My wife claims she also had a doppelganger event with her brother. She said that she was pissed off at him because he didn't walk the dog, so she was taking the dog out when she ran into her brother downstairs in the building lobby or parking lot, and he was with a friend she never met. Her brother asked her for the house keys, and she said no because she was mad at him. He told her he was thirsty and she walked away."
"When she got back home, he was not anywhere. As soon as she walked in, she got a call from a hospital that her brother was having an asthma attack and wanted her to go keep him company. What freaks her out the most is thinking... What would have happened if I would have given him the keys? Would they have gone through his hands or what?"
14."When I was around 9–10 years old, I remember waking up to see a large shadow standing at the foot of my bed. I was living with my dad at the time; he has a very large (five-floor) terrace house built in the 1800s. Every so often there would be an unexplainable event happen, such as footsteps when there’s no one there or voices. On the night this happened, it was just my dad and I in the house; my sister was staying with my mum at the time. I woke up and noticed the door to my room was wide open; I normally sleep with it closed. I then became aware of a large (around 7-feet tall) shadow-like figure watching me from the end of the bed."
"When the figure noticed me looking, it seemed to ‘melt’ into the floor ,and the door to my room slammed shut. Understandably I was slightly traumatized by the whole experience. Asked my dad the next day if he was in my room, and he denied any knowledge of the event (he’s not the type of person who likes jokes)."
15."My husband and I own a martial arts school, and the building that it's in (which we also own) is about 130 years old...next to a church... And I never (and still don't, really — there has to be another explanation) believed in the paranormal, but the things that happened in it didn't just happen to me. It was decrepit (which was why it was so cheap to purchase), and we basically did all the work ourselves: old, creaky, drafty. A bunch of things happened there. Here's one: One Saturday morning, my husband was on his computer in another room, I'm in the apartment playing with a Tamagotchi app on my iPad when I heard the stereo sitting in front of me click on, and a girl's voice started talking from it."
Marc Rodriguez / Via giphy.com
"I thought he controlled the stereo from his computer, so I ignored it because he often put on music to work out before class started (he teaches the morning class). I do remember thinking what kind of weird-ass indie music is he listening to anyway, because the voice just said, 'Hi, my name is (I thought I heard Katie, but I'm not 100% sure because I wasn't paying attention — I have never known a Katie in my life)... I am _ years old... I'm from __ ...' etc. I didn't catch the specifics because I wasn't really listening, but that went on for about two or three minutes until it suddenly went, 'Something's hurting me.' And when I caught that, I looked up and squinted at the stereo, like, what? 'Something's killing me. Something killed me.' At this point the hair is standing on the back of my neck, and I'm getting up from the couch to take a closer look. 'Please, someone tell my parents; tell the teachers; tell the corrections officer...'
At the words 'corrections officer' I just bolt into the other room and started yelling at my husband and cursing him out because I was certain he was playing a trick on me. Told him, 'We don't fucking play jokes about dead people.' And he's of course looking at me like WTF? When he finally calmed me down long enough to get what I heard out of me and what I was accusing him of, he told me it was impossible and led me to the stereo. It's not plugged in. I thought maybe the stereo picked up the signals from an e-book or something."
16."When I was younger, I used to take naps upstairs, but by the time I was 8 years old, I absolutely REFUSED to go upstairs. The upstairs had two large...closets? Attics? They ran from one side of the upstairs all the way to the other side, on both sides. It was essentially a crawl space that was maybe 30-feet long. It started one day when a friend and I went crawling from one side to the other with flashlights, like kids normally do. Then I saw a girl sitting there in the corner, acting like she wanted to play with us. I know a lot of people say when they see a ghost they aren't scared. Just interested. Nope, I was beyond terrified. This girl looked normal, had blonde hair, a nice dress, and seemed friendly. I stayed silent, kept crawling behind my friend, and got out of the closet. Told him what I saw in there; he said he didn't see it, but felt like he didn't want to go back in."
"Then my parents would occasionally send me upstairs to get something and when I would get up there, I would see the doors swing open. As if they were trying to get me to come inside. I would lose toys and wouldn't be able to find them anywhere. Suddenly, my parents would be fishing Christmas presents out of the attic, and we would find some of my toys in there.
I remember being 8 years old, my parents are asleep still in the morning, and I leashed up my dog to go take on the monster in the attic. My dog, usually up for anything, REFUSED to go off the top step into the attic. My parents never believed me with all the weird things that happened in that house. I would get blamed for things that happened all over the house. Leaving lights on, toys all over, things I knew I didn't do.
Well anyway, we moved out of there when I am 10. Not a week passed before the new owners called us up and asked if the house is haunted. Their daughter slept upstairs; she said that she had been playing with a blonde-haired girl at night. My parents laughed at how crazy these new homeowners must be.
To make an already long story short, the girl started appearing in other parts of the house for them (they kept in contact with us). They would look over while watching TV and see the girl sitting on their daughter's lap, etc. They looked up on the computer the past owners of the house, found an old dress maker that lived there, and — yep — a picture of the little girl wearing one of the ladies' dresses."
17."I used to live in an old, big five-bedroom house with six other people. My S.O. and I shared one of the rooms. I 'saw' a stranger in my room when I was in my 20s. It wasn’t exactly visible, but I somewhat knew it was right there in the corner of the room. My S.O. was next to me sleeping. While I had my eyes open, I knew it was there. So I closed my eyes. I tried to wish it away. I opened my eyes, and it was now next to the bed, looking at me. I closed my eyes again, and suddenly relief came. I opened my eyes, nothing there."
"I saw it once again at the stairs. It was only a brief moment this time, and then it was gone."
18."I lived in one when I was a teen, along with my parents. Several instances come to mind. We were remodeling an old farmhouse and had been there a couple of months before witnessing anything. One day I was underneath my truck, which was supported by only a jack (stupid, I know). I was in the middle of working on it, with no good reason to get out at that moment. Suddenly the urge to get out from underneath overwhelmed me. No sooner than I got out, the truck fell to the ground; the jack had slipped. Freaked Dad out; he thought I was under it. When Mom got home, we mentioned it, and she started crying, sobbing pretty hard. It turns out the previous owner died in the driveway, under a vehicle, in that spot."
"I would often see moving shadows, and strangely hear music from the upstairs area. The windows of the old house were caulked shut, and blackbirds would often get caught between the panes. We ended up replacing all the windows, but we had to break three inside panes to get them out. One of the more disturbing things happened when my mother was cooking breakfast; she turned away to get something out of the cabinet, and when she turned back around, all the forks set out were bent straight up."
19."My father-in-law died before my son was born, so he never met him. When we moved into our new home, my son would often be laughing in the middle of the night by himself. No biggie — kids will play with anything. One day, we were finally putting pictures up in the house, and once I put up the picture of my father-in-law, he said, 'Oh Mommy, why do you have a picture of the man that comes and plays with me at night?'"
"He had never ever seen a picture of my father-in-law before."
20."So two weeks before we moved, my dad and I toured our house and I noticed this guy was painting the water heater, which I thought was weird AF, but I was like 10 so whatever. Anyway, we moved in on a Wednesday, and my parents let me stay home from school until the following Monday and preoccupied me with coloring books and a new doll house. In my brand-new crayons pack, there literally wasn’t a blue crayon, like it was a 64-pack, but there were only 63 crayons in it. One day I went downstairs into the basement, and my blue crayon was next to the hot water heater, and scribbled on there it said, “Hi fitnurse6 — Kevin.'"
"I was so confused. I started school, and my new classmates were like, 'OMG, do you live in Kevin’s house?! Your house is gonna be haunted!!' It turned out that Kevin was a little 8-year-old boy that lived in our house prior to us, and he got hit by a car in the front yard.
He would write notes if you left out a pen and paper, open and close doors, adjust the thermostat (the kind where you had to turn a knob), and always turned on Christmas music when it was that time of year :) We had a swing set in the backyard and even on the hottest, calmest days of summer, only the left swing would be moving back and forth.
We had this dumb cat that I would lock in my bedroom at night, and every morning, my parents would open the door and let him out, then close it back. One night I woke up and the cat was meowing at the door, and it woke me up, but the door opened and the cat hissed and ran out really fast. I asked my mom the next morning why they didn’t close my door, and they said they didn’t open it??
The last story is when I was very upset and nearly suicidal one year during Christmas break — the police just randomly showed up at my house. The policeman said he was patrolling our neighborhood and felt like something was wrong at our house. I'm absolutely certain Kevin had something to do with it."
21."I am not the type to believe in ghosts, but this happened to me and I have no explanation. My mom passed away in 2016 at 56 of cancer. She was in hospice and died in her home. One of her favorite songs was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" — which I added to her memorial video. Fast-forward months later, I am cleaning out her home of her belongings by myself. There is no one else there. At one point I have an emotional breakdown and step outside to collect myself. When I return, I hear music coming from the other side of the house...which immediately struck me as weird, as not only was I there alone, but the electricity in the home is shut off. I follow the music to a bookshelf, where I find it emanating from a snow globe."
"It's motion-activated and only plays music when picked up. The song? 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'"
22."I had the best haunter ever and miss my first home because of this. I grew up with a cat, Boots, who was just a year my junior. Boots was motivated only by food and spent his later years sleeping on my parents' bed until someone came home, then he’d jump off the bed, with a 'thunk-thunk' of his front and back paws hitting the ground, and run to his food bowl to beg. He had to be put down when I was 18. My parents moved out of my childhood home during my first year of college. I went back a few times before it sold. Every time, I was certain I felt a cat’s presence. Like, I’d hesitate my step because I was sure a cat just walked under my legs kinda thing. Also, upon walking in, I’d always hear a thunk-thunk, like Boots jumping down to beg for food."
"My mom and I went back for the last day my family would ever be in that home, and I told her on the way what I’d experienced. To my surprise, she had the exact same feeling. When we walked into the house: thunk-thunk. We exchanged shocked glances, and confirmed we both heard it. I went and sat in my empty room while my mom got the final things together, and while my eyes were closed I had to force myself to not pet a cat that I felt walk up to me, because I knew logically he wasn’t there.
Before leaving, we stood in the hallway outside my parents’ bedroom, hugged each other, and cried, saying bye to my first home. I said I thought Boots was still around, and suggested we take his spirit to the new house. She agreed, so she called out, 'Bootsy!!' From my parents’ room: thunk-thunk.
We both heard it. I don’t think he came with us. He never liked car rides. But I hope the owners since us have enjoyed their ghost kitty. He was a good boy."
Have you experienced any incidents of a ghostly nature? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some answers have been edited for length/clarity.