16 Haunting Paranormal Horror Stories With Dark Ambience & Rain

Summary

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Southern Cannibal’s Scary Stories: 16 Haunting Paranormal Horror Stories With Dark Ambience & Rain

Podcast: Southern Cannibal’s Scary Stories
Host: Southern Cannibal
Date: April 23, 2026
Episode Theme:
A chilling compilation of listener-submitted real-life true paranormal experiences, each narrated with dark ambience and rain, weaving together ghostly happenings, haunted houses, poltergeist pranks, sinister shadows, and the lingering echoes of the supernatural.

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Episode Overview

This episode features 16 harrowing personal tales from various contributors, each recounting deeply unsettling encounters with the paranormal. Listeners are taken on a journey through haunted family homes, eerie townhouses, ghostly babysitting gigs, spectral childhood friends, and inexplicable poltergeist phenomena. The stories are threaded with recurring motifs: inherited hauntings, shadows feeding off grief, “residual” entities, and the ways trauma and family bonds intertwine with the uncanny.

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Key Stories and Discussion Points

1. A Family Home—and Its Ghostly Transformation

Timestamps: 01:02 – 12:54 (Joan’s Story)

• A woman looks back on her childhood home in rural South Carolina, where odd phenomena escalated after her mother’s death.
• Initially, the family witnessed benign “residuals”—white flashes of light, misplaced objects, and the sensation of someone watching.
• After family members began dying, the atmosphere shifted; darkness and malevolent shadows replaced the warm familial “light.”
• The haunting intensified: her daughter, B, saw a “dark shadow” in her room, felt something breathing on her neck, and entered dissociative states.
• Family and friends reported disturbing experiences: a child’s terror, a friend refusing to enter the house, doors slamming at crucial moments.
• The narrator’s realization comes with her sister-in-law’s intervention: reciting “the armor of God” verses lightens the atmosphere, and the family finally moves out.
• Quote:
  “It was almost like when my parents left, something else came in… something darker.” (Joan, 07:20)
  “I saw my stepdad sitting cross-legged in the middle of the kitchen table. He looked very happy… At that moment I just felt so much light…” (Joan, 06:30)
• Memorable Moment:
  The doors slam shut at the very moment she hands over the house keys—a gesture the narrator interprets as her parents’ spirits protecting her daughter one last time before she leaves for good.

2. The Man On The Stairs—A Haunted Civil War-era Home

Timestamps: 12:57 – 23:54

• The narrator relates growing up in a house built in 1871, with an “upstairs apartment” where multiple unrelated women—guests, friends, girlfriends—all see the apparition of an old man in suspenders, a white shirt, and red suspenders.
• These sightings occur consistently in the same spot and the same manner, always witnessed by others, never by the narrator.
• Other phenomena: persistent footsteps, apparitional figures moving through the house, unexplained noises.
• Quote:
  “She described him very similarly to the way Jan had…skinny, glasses, white shirt, suspenders, jeans, and a big nose.” (19:07)
  “I never did see the old man myself, but I did see many other creepy things.” (22:48)

3. Poltergeist in a Utah Townhome (Built on a Cemetery)

Timestamps: 23:54 – 27:35

• The narrator and their sisters encounter regular disturbances in their Springville, Utah home: hugs from unseen presences, reflections of strange women, malfunctioning (and possessed-sounding) toys, and recurring nightmares long after moving away.
• The most haunting moment: a battery-free McDonald’s toy repeatedly chants “French fries” before its voice turns demonic.
• Quote:
  “The voice actually turned into a demonic tone. I probably wouldn’t believe it either, but this really did happen.” (23:54)
• Memorable Moment:
  After moving, the siblings continue to have persistent, disturbing dreams about being watched or chased in the old townhome.

4. Babysitting Sebastian: The Child Ghost and His Toy

Timestamps: 27:36 – 36:12

• Darlene, a longtime babysitter, recounts a series of inexplicable events centering around a talking ABC toy that moves on its own and speaks after batteries are removed.
• The children she sits consistently reference “Sebastian,” an unseen playmate, whom only the middle child can apparently communicate with.
• The parents eventually explain: a boy named Sebastian died in the house before they moved in, and their daughter has always played with “him.”
• Quote:
  “Sebastian is upset that you don’t give him the same attention that you give us… he wants your attention now.” (32:57, Tracy to Darlene) “He says thank you...” (34:16, Tracy to Darlene, after making a sandwich for Sebastian)
• Memorable Moment:
  The mother calmly tells Darlene, “Tracy had already told me about Sebastian liking you ever since you started babysitting them… but I told her not to tell you anything because it may startle you or you wouldn’t believe her.” (35:27)

5. Babysitting the Doll—And the Child’s Grave

Timestamps: 37:16 – 39:53

• Two teens are hired to babysit “Maximus.” They find a spotless, lifeless house—and only a human-sized doll on a bed.
• When the mother calls, she refers to the doll as her son, instructing them to get “Maximus” ready for bed.
• On the way out, they spot a gravestone: “Maximus Jones 1870.”
• Quote:
  “I think that this woman thinks this doll is her child.” (38:57)
• Memorable Moment:
  The narrator and friend quit babysitting after this chilling experience.

6. Babysitting Siblings—A Child-Sized Shadow That Isn’t Family

Timestamps: 39:54 – 47:48

• The oldest sister, left to watch her three siblings, experiences the sensation of a small figure moving around the basement after she knows the children are all accounted for upstairs.
• Multiple sightings and strange reflections, along with an unshakable sense of being watched, drive her into a mild panic attack.
• Quote:
  “Who did I see? I was shaking… like a few tears can literally turn into a full blown panic attack.” (44:40)

7. The Shadow Beast and the Locked House

Timestamps: 47:49 – 61:05

• At age six, the narrator witnesses a series of terrifying events across the street in a friend’s house.
• Recurring elements: blinking lights, static phone calls, a massive black “dog” shadow creature that passes through solid doors, laughter on phone lines, heavy footsteps, figures materializing and vanishing.
• Quote:
  “I saw a huge, black, shadowy dog walk out of the bushes, up the porch steps and through your legs. It then disappeared right through the door.” (58:35)
• Memorable Moment:
  The narrator is told by their mother, “You saw nothing. You imagined it.” (59:35)

8. The Clown Head and the Candle Woman—Guardian Spirits?

Timestamps: 61:44 – 65:29

• Two children encounter a floating clown’s head followed by a spectral woman with blurred face and a candle. The clown vanishes when the woman appears.
• The mother later interprets the woman as a guardian angel protecting them from a negative spirit.
• Quote:
  “She said we’d been protected by an angel.” (64:52)

9. Shadow People, Dreadlocks, and Murmurs: Childhood Home Hauntings

Timestamps: 65:37 – 73:19 ("Pops’" Stories)

• “Pops” shares several personal experiences:
  • A mysterious white cat appearing then vanishing through a closed door (66:44)
  • Unexplained voices and melancholy singing at night
  • A terrifying figure with rust-colored “sickle dreads” nodding at him in the mirror, while he is paralyzed with fear (68:52)
  • A phone off the hook leads to a near-invisible intruder racing up the basement stairs, terrifying him into fleeing outside (72:12)
• Quote:
  “All I could really see was its head… dreads in small sickle shapes.” (68:54)

10. Babysitting, Nightmares, and Phantom Scratches

Timestamps: 73:19 – 77:52 (Maddie’s Story)

• Maddie cares for a neighbor’s dogs but is plagued by a feeling of dread centered on the basement.
• Her pet refuses to enter, she hears disturbances, and dreams vividly of a boy trapped there. Later, she discovers scratches on her neck and, at a local graveyard, finds the headstone of the boy from her dream.
• Quote:
  “I dreamt of a little boy who was in the basement with me, begging me to help him escape…” (75:35)

11. Poltergeist in Limor, California

Timestamps: 77:53 – 81:16

• Family haunted by banging, smashing, and the horrifying sensation of a presence sitting on a sleeping parent.
• Multiple children witness a menacing face in the closet, resembling the mascot from MAD magazine.
• Final night: child screams as a “head” peers from the closet; family evacuates to a hotel, never to return.
• Quote:
  “I'd never seen him to this day that petrified.” (80:54)

12. The Room You Can't Change—A Rental With Rules

Timestamps: 81:17 – 85:47

• Teen’s family rents a house but is forbidden to change anything in a little girl’s fully furnished room.
• Recurring phenomena: black shadow girl, doors slamming and refusing to stay closed, electronics glitching when recording, found Ouija boards.
• Quote:
  “As we were leaving, it actually seemed like the spirit got even more angry by us leaving…” (84:51)

13. The Parsonage, Trinkets, and The Playful Ghost

Timestamps: 85:47 – 94:55

• A pastor’s daughter in a parsonage finds trinkets and candy mysteriously left under her pillow. In their next, more stately home, a dark oppressive air prevails.
• Repeated dreams and sinister phenomena—shadowy outlines of children painted on basement walls, feeling summoned to the upper floor, and unexplained nocturnal noises.
• Quote:
  “For a long time, I was really frightened of the upper level on the second floor. …it always felt like something was beckoning me to come back upstairs.” (89:47)

14. The Chilling “White Bedroom” with Its Hidden Sadness

Timestamps: 95:55 – 103:10

• As a teen, the narrator stays in the "white room"—a converted garage in a unique, '40s-built family home—where violent cold, banging closet doors, and sudden electrical surges culminate in a terrifying night.
• Discovery: a great-grandfather died bitter in that room. In adulthood, a painting left behind seems like a final, apologetic message.
• Quote:
  “I like to think being guided to this painting was kind of his way of apologizing for the scare he gave us all those years ago.” (103:09)

15. The Ghost Train and The Protector (“Mr. Conductor”)

Timestamps: 103:11 – 115:02

• In a rundown mill house near the tracks, two Native American children are traumatized by abuse and find comfort in the recurring visits of a ghost train and its conductor.
• “Mr. Conductor” always appeared when pain was at its worst, offering comfort but eventually attempting to take them away—only to be rebuffed by their father in a dramatic supernatural struggle.
• Quote:
  “He had the aura of a loving grandfather. It was strange. Gabby and I knew evil. We were living with it. But Mr. Conductor didn’t have that energy.” (113:18) “You saw nothing. You imagined it.” (59:37, parallel to previous story)

16. A Closet, a Cat, and Unsettling Scratching

Timestamps: 115:22 – end

• Teenage narrator stays up late playing video games, accompanied by his sister’s cat, Simba. Scratching at the door, followed by the sound of objects being knocked over, and the cat unmoved from his bed convinces the narrator something else is present.
• Quote:
  “This time it lasted for, like, a solid 30 seconds… it didn’t end here though.” (116:03)
• Memorable Moment:
  The decision to arm himself with a toy knife and his reflection that, years later, it remains unexplainable.

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Notable Quotes

• “It was almost like when my parents left, something else came in… something darker.” (Joan, 07:20)
• “She described him very similarly to the way Jan had…skinny, glasses, white shirt, suspenders, jeans, and a big nose.” (19:07)
• “The voice actually turned into a demonic tone. I probably wouldn’t believe it either, but this really did happen.” (23:54)
• “Sebastian is upset that you don’t give him the same attention that you give us… he wants your attention now.” (32:57, Tracy to Darlene)
• “I saw a huge, black, shadowy dog walk out of the bushes, up the porch steps and through your legs. It then disappeared right through the door.” (58:35)
• “She said we’d been protected by an angel.” (64:52)
• “All I could really see was its head… dreads in small sickle shapes.” (68:54)
• “He had the aura of a loving grandfather… Gabby and I knew evil. We were living with it. But Mr. Conductor didn’t have that energy.” (113:18)

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Themes and Patterns

• Hauntings Feeding Off Grief & Trauma: Many stories underscore that paranormal phenomena intensify after moments of mourning, upheaval, or family trauma.
• Residual Spirits vs. Active Entities: Multiple narrators distinguish between benign “residuals” and darker, malicious presences.
• Recurring Visions & Dreams: Nightmares and recurring visions bind the stories, from ghost trains to childhood guardians.
• Objects as Conduits: Toys, trinkets, and seemingly mundane items—dolls, ABC machines, closet doors—activate supernatural happenings.
• Skepticism, Doubt, and Family Silence: Several families refuse to discuss haunted happenings, sometimes shutting down children’s accounts to deny the reality of what they saw.

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Memorable Moments

• The child’s experience of comfort and protection by the “ghost train” conductor in moments of abuse.
  (103:11 – 113:18)
• A babysitter’s terror as a supposedly imaginary child-ghost seeks her attention through toys and the explanations of his living playmates.
  (27:36 – 36:12)
• Discovering that repeated chilling phenomena correlate with family grief and unresolved trauma, leading to an ultimate exodus from the haunted house.
  (01:02 – 12:54)

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Conclusion

Southern Cannibal’s episode delivers both a collection of unforgettable supernatural stories and a meditation on the ways that trauma, family bonds, childhood, and the unknown intersect. The narrators remain honest, vulnerable, and often skeptical, making their encounters all the more chilling—and relatable—for listeners.

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(Ad sections and promotional breaks omitted for clarity.)

Transcript

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[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

My name is Joan and this all started when I was a little girl growing up in a small town in South Carolina. My family and I moved into a house the year that I was to start kindergarten. I was the youngest child of four kids. The home that our mom and stepdad provided for us was a very loving and happy one. Even though we didn't have a lot of money, we had lots of love and loads of fun. We never really talked about ghosts or anything paranormal other than the obligatory campfire story to keep us from wandering off

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

into the woods alone.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

My siblings would always play pranks on me because I was the baby and for some reason it was fun to torture the youngest. So when little stuff started happening, my mom would just blame it on my brothers and sister. It would be things like objects not being where, you know you had put them, or sometimes a light would be on that you know you had turned off. As I got older, my siblings and I would notice something like a white glowy flash of something moving through our kitchen and hallway. You would only see it out of the corner of your eye and it was always in the same place, moving in the same direction. It never really bothered us and mom would just say it was just car lights or something of the sort of during our school years, all of our friends wanted to hang out at our house because our parents were so much fun to be around and there was always some good food cooking in the kitchen. You could just feel the love they gave us and our friends. With that being said, a couple of our friends started noticing the strange residual thing in the kitchen and hallway. It was always in the same spots and the same route, but not every night. After the stuff being moved and the residual things that were being talked about, more stuff started Happening. You could be washing dishes in the kitchen and you could feel someone behind you, watching you, but then no one would be there. You could hear your name being called, but no one would be in the house with you. As we got older, my brothers and sisters got married and moved out. But I, being the youngest by six years, was still there. When I was in my late teens, I was having a sleepover with three of my friends when all of a sudden we see the glowing white flash of the residual thing that I mentioned before. One of my guy friends totally freaked out. We tried to explain to him that whatever it is, it never seemed bad and that this had been happening for a very long time. Nothing we told him was working. We literally had to take this 19 year old guy home in the middle of the night. Fast forward to several years later and I'm a single mom and because of circumstances beyond my control, I was still living at home with mom and dad. My mom and dad watched my daughter while I worked. And one night when my daughter, who we'll call B, was around 4 years old, my mom said B would stand in the living room and talk towards the corner by the front door. My mom asked her who she was talking to and B then said she was talking to the snake man. Needless to say, this freaked my mom the hell out. So she got up and took B into the bedroom with my dad and then went to sleep. My mom told me that B had done this talking thing several times, but that was the only time my mom asked her who she was talking to. The other little things kept happening during this time as well. But it seemed the more it was talked about, the more often things would happen. As B was getting a little older, she would come inside from playing outside and ask me what I wanted because she kept hearing me call her name. But I hadn't called her. When B turned seven, we had lost my mom to a very short battle with colon cancer. This absolutely devastated my stepdad and he wanted me and B to stay with them, so he did. He would keep B while I worked and the two of them were very close. Bea really loved her grandpa. But 10 years after we lost my mom, grandpa passed away from lung cancer only two months after he was diagnosed. After that, the feeling in the house just really changed. The love and light that used to fill the home was now gone. And there was a heavy feeling and the house had a darkness to was almost like when my parents left. Something else came in. I was seeing shadows darker than the residual thing that had always been There at the same time. Bea, who was 17 at the time, was also experiencing things as well. But we didn't tell each other because we didn't want the other one to be scared or think that each other had lost our minds. She and I were both going through a really dark time and I really believe that was what was giving this thing more energy. I came in from work one night and B was already in bed. I went to the fridge to get a glass of tea when out of the corner of my eye I saw my stepdad sitting cross legged in the middle of the kitchen table. He looked very happy and he had a big smile on his face. The kitchen table was his favorite spot when he was alive. He would sit there and drink his coffee and he loved it when you would just sit and talk with him. At that moment that I saw him, I just felt so much light in the room, like everything was going to be alright. The house felt lighter for a couple of weeks after that. During this time a friend from work had asked to stay with us while his house was being renovated. I was more than happy to have him there as he was a good friend and he was a lot fun to be around. My niece would come over with their daughter who was about three at the time. The three year old would several times just start freaking out and start crying, then pointing towards my daughter's room. My niece would have to leave because her daughter would not calm down until they left. So now the house had once again started feeling dark again. Now mind you, all of this is going on just within a couple of months after grandpa passed away. So one day me and B are in the kitchen and I was cooking. B was sitting on the counter like teenagers do sometimes. I was talking to her while my back was turned to her. I asked her a question but she didn't answer me. I turned around but she looked like she was in some kind of dazed like state. She was holding a butter knife and was scratching her leg with it. This had scared me because she was really out of it. I yelled her name and she came to like she was waking up from a dream state. That's when she started crying then telling me what all she had been experiencing. She said that there was a dark shadow that would move up and down the wall in the corner of her bedroom. She said that it even moved around her bed while she was trying to sleep. It had gotten to the point that she could feel something breathing on her neck. She said she was scared to tell me because of all I was going through with grandpa passing away and she didn't want me to think that she was losing it. That's when I told her about the things that I had seen as well. We both then agreed not to keep things from each other anymore. We figured that these things were happening because of the grieving and what we were going through. A couple of days later, while my daughter was at school, I had come home from working an early shift. My friend from work that had been staying with us was sitting in his car in the yard. I asked him what he was doing sitting in the car, which he replied then he needed to talk to me about something very important. He proceeded to tell me then he wasn't going to be able to stay there anymore because that he thought our house was haunted. He told me that he had been seeing dark shadows moving around in the house and that earlier that day he was sitting on the back porch with his back to my daughter's bedroom window when he felt something blow really hot breath on his neck. He said that the breath was so strong that it actually moved his hair. He also said that the wind wasn't blowing because that's the first thing I asked him even though I knew it wasn't the wind. He had been waiting on me to get home because he didn't want to go in the house by himself to get his stuff. He got all of his stuff except for his bed and he was going to come back later that day to get it. Right after he left, I took a shower and I was brushing my teeth when I heard the very distinct sound of the back door opening and closing. Then footsteps. I then saw out of the corner of my eye someone leaning against the door frame of the bathroom. As I turned around, I then said, wow, that was fast. Thinking it was my friend who had just left. But there was no one there. All of a sudden the room felt strange, like good and bad all at the same time. Right then the phone rang. It was my sister in law. Just a little background on my sister in law. She and my brother are really big time members in their church and I didn't think they believed all of the things me and B. Were going through. She said that she was very concerned, that she had a really strong feeling that there was something in the house and that whatever it was was after me and B. And especially Bea. When she said that, I just started boo hooing so hard and I was trying to tell her all about the stuff that me and B. Were going through. She told me to get out my Bible and turn to the part about the armor of God and to read it out loud. I turned to the page, but I couldn't read. Was like the pages were blank. I told her I couldn't see it. So she started reading the words for me and they started appearing to where I could read them aloud with her. When she finished reading the verses, she said a prayer. When she finished the prayer, I kid you not. The house felt so much lighter and brighter. She said for me to open a Bible to those verses and place one in every room. She then said that maybe we should really think about moving out of that house. This had honestly really shocked me because I thought that the family wanted us to stay there because that's where we had all grown up at. But everyone was okay with us giving it up. This was such a relief for me. I went that day and rented an apartment for me and B. We moved most of our stuff within a couple of days, except for a few boxes in the attic. A very close family friend took over the house and was doing some renovations. The day we went to pick up the last box of stuff and give the family friend the keys, he was at the house painting the kitchen. He had the back and front doors propped open for fresh air from the paint. When we pulled into the driveway, B. And I just kind of looked at each other. So I told her to sit in the car because I didn't want her to have to go back in the house. I went and got the box. When I handed him the key to the house, both the front and back door slammed shut at the very same time. It scared me so bad that I just couldn't speak a full sentence. I just looked at the guy and told him, I gotta get outta here. When I opened the door and ran out, B. Was just standing there with a very shocked look on her face. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was going to come help me carry the box of stuff behind there. Right when she was about to come inside, the door had slammed right in her face. We left there that day and haven't been back to that house Since.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

This was 14 years ago.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Looking back on it now, I honestly believe my mom and stepdad were the ones who shut the door that day to keep my daughter from coming in the house because they didn't want whatever was there to attach itself to her. We drive by the place every once in a while, but I don't miss it at all. Even though we all had a really great childhood and had so much love and Fun growing up in that house. It completely changed after my mom and stepdad had passed away. As far as I know, the same people have lived there since we moved out, so hopefully they haven't had any problems. Thank you all for taking the time to listen to my story and I would really love to know what you guys think. What was actually going on in that house. Stay hungry everyone and stay safe. I grew up in a small southern town where everyone knew everyone. The house I lived in for the first 30 years of my life was actually built in 1871, only six years after the end of the Civil War. I was born in 1991. So yeah, the house is old old. I have plenty of stories about creepy things that happened while I lived there and periodically I'm going to be sending more stories. But today I'll start with one of the more tamer ones. When I graduated from high school, I was only just discovering my confidence in myself and learning how to talk to girls. I started seeing a girl who went to a different high school but had also just graduated. Lets call her Jan. We hung out a lot for the first part of the summer before our attraction to each other started to fizzle out and we decided it was best to go our separate ways while things were still going good. We became intimate. We were trying to figure out when and where to, let's say, get together. I told her my house would be fine as my mom worked 85 Monday through Friday and sometimes was on call on the weekend. We were both off Sunday to Tuesday. Now I need to give you some details of my house as it was pretty huge. It was two main floors with 12 foot ceilings, 16 rooms, a basement and an attic. At the top of the stairs there's a small balcony area to the right that also leads to my mom's bedroom. To the left is a guest bedroom.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

Straight ahead is a doorway to what

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

I refer to as the upstairs apartment because I had started paying rent when I got my first job. When you open the apartment door to the left is a bathroom while straight ahead is my TV room which you walk through to get to my room. And in my room there's a doorway to get into the bathroom so it makes sort of a circle all the way around to the right. On the balcony there was a window that looked out over the front yard. My mom had put an old chair and a small table with a reading lamp out for a bit of decoration. So on the first day Jan came over and we headed upstairs. We get to the top of the stairs and I open the door to the apartment area. I'm not paying attention to any of my surroundings as I'm trying to focus on what's about to happen. As she comes through the door, I shut up behind her and she said I thought we were gonna be alone here. I asked her what she was talking about and she asks me who the old man is sitting on the balcony. I stop for a second and I just look at her all confused. I tell her that there's no one else here and I ask her to show me where she saw him. We step back out onto the balcony and looked around the corner. There was no one sitting anywhere. She then described to me the man in great detail, saying that he was sitting down in the chair in the window and that if he stood up he would be at least 6ft tall. Hay looked slim and he wore a white button up shirt with red suspenders and jeans. He had on gray loafers and a golden watch. She said that he had a large hook nose. She said that he just sat there without even looking at us or without even moving. But she knows he was there. The man that she described didn't ring any bells to me and I was sure it wasn't anyone I knew. Not sure if she was messing with me or just seeing things, I looked around my house to make sure no one was there. Before I went to my room. We were both weirded out and I then suggested that we watch a movie until we calmed down. We snuggled up and things happened, but I was still curious what she saw. She came over every Monday and Tuesday for a couple of months after this and only one other time did she say she saw the man. He was in the same spot, wearing the same things. Again, I didn't see him, but this isn't where the story ends. Eventually, Jan and I became interested in other people and we mutually agreed to part ways. My mom started renting the guest room to my friend who I'll call Whitney or Whit for short. She had been around a lot as she was the high school sweetheart of my friend who we'll call Corey. Whit was also friends with a girl who we'll call Krista. Krista graduated the same high school as we did two years earlier, but she was the same age as me. Due to the fact that I was held back once and she graduated two years early, the school system decided to advance her twice because she did so well in school. I really liked her and she thought I was funny and enjoyed being around. So we started hanging out alone with Corey and Whitney. One of the first times she came

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

over was in the middle of the

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

day and we were just going to watch a movie. Christa was used to just walking in as we had really gotten used to her being around. She came upstairs and back to my room and asked me if I had a family member visiting or something. I said no and I asked her why she thought that. Then she asked, well then, who's that man sitting at the top of the stairs? I must have given her a look of sheer shock because after she was looking back at me with a look of worry, I asked her what this man looked like. She described him very similarly to the way Jan had skinny glasses with white shirt, suspenders, jeans, and that he had a big nose. I walked out and checked the balcony

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

as well as the rest of the

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

house and of course I found nothing. I asked Krista if she knew Jan, thinking that they may have talked about me and maybe they had been in on the joke together somehow. But Christa just told me that other than the few times she had been mentioned by me or our friends, she didn't know her. I even looked on her Facebook to see if they were friends and they weren't. I then told Krista that Jan had seen a man that she had described basically the same way, sitting in the same spot a couple of times, but that I had never seen who they were talking about. Christa wasn't nearly as freaked out by it as Jan had been, however. She never saw him again that I know of. It may have been because she was actually looking for for him every time she came over after that. Christa and I would be on and off over the next several years, always remaining friends even when we weren't together, and she would report hearing footsteps that woke her up almost anytime. She slept on my couch in the apartment's living room. This is something that Whitney and I would both confirm. We heard relatively often, but we would have chalked it up to one of us or even my mother getting up to use the restroom. However, Christa would insist that she would hear footsteps coming from the balcony and that she would be able to see someone who was walking through the house to the bathroom. During this time I was also on again off again with another girl who I'll call Heather. I'm not super interested in going into the details about her as I greatly regret having anything to do with her. However, she did report seeing a man in the same same location and same appearance on three separate occasions. I believed her simply because she was new to the area. And I know she didn't know the other two girls. I never did see the old man myself, but I did see many other creepy things. It really was a creepy and wild experience living in that house. This took place in Springville, Utah about 15 years ago. Myself and three sisters lived in a townhome at the time. During our time living there, we had encountered weird situations. The townhome consisted of two floors. We had all encountered weird and creepy stuff in the townhome. Also, I want to note that Springville, Utah and surrounding areas are known to be found famous for the Mormon Church, a cult to some degree. The area we lived in the townhome was built over an old cemetery years back. I'd like to start off with my dad's stories. One day when he was sleeping downstairs, he would feel a person hug him late at night and he would think it was my mom. But there was no physical person nearby. He also encountered in the upstairs bathroom someone staring at him while he was in the restroom. While having the bathroom door open, he would see in the reflection of the mirror a lady with hair in his room. While in the restroom, he got goosebumps but just brushed it off. He mentioned how bad the chills felt at the moment. My parents stated that they would hear noises and dishes falling at random times of the day and night. But my dad's stories were no more scarier than the ones me and my sisters experienced. My sisters during that time would encounter stuff in their rooms. They would hear noises in the closet. Two of my sisters, while randomly hanging out upstairs, saw a little girl pass in one of the rooms and just vanish. Very confused, they went in there to play in their room. Playing with this McDonald's toy in the closet, you would press a button and it would say French fries over and over. But during that time it had no batteries in it. After figuring out that they had no batteries, they went about their night. But later that night, the McDonald's toy was placed back in the closet and it started to say French fries over and over and over again, getting louder until the voice actually turned into a demonic tone. Now, I know this sounds ridiculous, but. And I probably wouldn't believe it either,

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

but this really did happen.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Well, finally I myself would have an encounter as well. I had a pretty weird dream while sleeping in the living room. Before heading to bed, I would lock the front and back door where the laundry room was and everyone was sound asleep upstairs. I went to bed and I had a dream where me and my siblings were downstairs and in the corner of my eye I had saw a tall figure staring at us with the door halfway open in the laundry room. I froze at the tall black figure and I really tried to keep an eye out on it. I woke up after having that dream and I was frozen still. When I got up that morning I saw the back door to the laundry room wide open. I had told my dad all about the dream I had and I had even asked them if they went upstairs that night or during the early morning, but no one ever did. We ended up moving right across next to another townhome in those last remaining years that we lived in that area. But there was also another encounter that my dad told me when we moved to the second townhome my dad had mentioned while they were selling the townhome across where we used to live. I around 2am he had got up and headed to the restroom and he could see the other back side of a townhome. He said that he saw in the upstairs hallway a lady with long hair entering the restroom, which was odd because no one could be in that house since it was for sale, especially at 2am which would be considered trespassing. My dad and sister stated and mentioned these stories years after we moved out of the Townhome townhomes area. But what really bothers me to this day is myself as well as my siblings have all recently and since then encountered weird dreams about that place regarding both of the townhomes we lived in. Especially me. To this day I dream of being sucked into the restroom or being watched in that townhome or I just have recurring dreams where I still live there, or I dream of random scary things. My sisters also dream of seeing people staring or chasing them and I can't understand why after moving away all these years that we still have those dreams of this place. Perhaps there's just a much darker meaning to the neighborhood that we don't know. In any case, I'm just really glad we don't live there anymore. I'm a 27 year old female and this happened six months ago. I used to be a skeptic up until the experience I've had while babysitting. I've been babysitting three children, Tracy who is 10, Mike who is 8 and Sally who's 4. Ever since Sally was a few months old, I've never really had hard times with them other than a few tantrums here and there, which is completely normal. Overall, I care about these children as if they were my own. One day their mother had called me to Babysit them again for about six days while she and her husband were on business travel. The first three nights, everything went normal up until the fourth night. The children and I were watching cartoons until it was time for them to go to bed. Sally was the most difficult to tuck in bed since she was younger and had the most in energy. For context, all three children slept in the same bedroom since Mike's bedroom was being remodeled. When I finally got Sally to sleep, I went downstairs to watch my favorite show when I had suddenly heard Sally's ABC toy. The toy had letters as buttons where toddlers can learn them. I instantly thought Sally got out of bed and it started to play. Annoyed, I got up from the couch and then went upstairs. I opened their bedroom door only to see that all three of them were fast asleep. Keep in mind that there were no toys on the floor. I checked inside their closet where all their toys were kept at. I kept looking for that specific toy, but I just couldn't find it, which made no sense. I mean, I had clearly heard it up there. Then suddenly I now heard the toy downstairs. There's this button on the toy that says abc, come sing with me. And then there's a little giggle at the end. That's exactly what I heard. My stomach dropped to the point where I just froze in shock and with confusion. I knew for a fact that Sally didn't bring it downstairs from either day. I then quietly went downstairs to later find that the toy was on the desk dining table. I froze again. It was definitely not there before. When I got near the toy, I noticed that it was off, but it had said again, abc, come sing with me. I yelped. I then got the toy and took out the batteries. Tracy had called out my name from the top of the stairs and she asked what was the matter. I didn't want to scare scare her, so I just said nothing. Go back to bed. I didn't know what to make out of this. I then placed the batteries in the drawer in the kitchen and then went to check on the children. Tracy sat up from her bed. When she saw me, I sat next to her and told her that everything was okay. Liar. She said. You're scared. I made a puzzled look and then said no. I just had a bad dream, that's all. She then slowly shook her head no. Nuh uh. Sebastian scared you. Um, who's Sebastian? I asked. She later laid down facing the wall. Don't let him scare you, Darlene. He just wants to play with Sally's toy. I was now so Confused, yet so scared I didn't want to ask her anymore more questions. I couldn't sleep that night. Did Tracy also hear the toy? Is she really used to it? The following night I was actually able to fall asleep this time since Nothing unusual occurred, that is until 4 in the morning. Hit. I heard whispers outside of my door. It was still dark out and I had rubbed my eyes to go check out the noises. It was coming from the children's room that was across across mine. I slowly opened their door and I then saw Tracy sitting on the rug. She looked up at me with a surprised look on her face. What are you doing up? I asked. Nothing, she replied. Go to bed. It's way too early to be up. Who are you even talking to? Tracy just stared at me with a blank expression. I heard you, Tracy. I know you were talking. Sebastian is upset that you don't give him the same attention that you give us. He keeps trying to catch your attention so you can also take care of him. All of the hairs on my body then stood up. Tracy, please go to bed. We'll talk about this later. No, Sebastian wants your attention now and he wants you to understand that. She then said in a much louder tone. By that point, Mike and Sally also woke up. Tracy, Sebastian has to leave you alone. Mike groaned. Okay, so all of you know about Sebastian? I asked. They all nodded. Thankfully, their parents were coming back that very day because I wanted to get out of there. Fast forward to an hour before their arrival. Tracy didn't want to eat the sandwich I made her. Mike and Sally had no problem and they were playing out in their backyard once they were finished. Tracy, you've been sitting there without touching your food for an hour by this point I was getting irritated. Tracy then looked at me and then said, where's Sebastian's meal? I tried to play along, where's Sebastian right now? He's holding onto your leg giggling. My body froze. Just imagining that made my stomach turn. I tried to remain calm and positive. Well Sebastian, if you don't sit down, I won't make you a sandwich. Tracy then smiles while looking down at where I was standing. I was really hoping for her parents to get here very soon. I made the extra sandwich and then placed it where Tracy said he was sitting. He says thank you. She said, I don't know why, but that it actually made me feel a bit better. Eventually, her parents arrived. Once they settled their things and greeted us, the mom had looked at the untouched sandwich and smiled, asking why it was there. Tracy and the other children Were already outside with their father playing by this point. I lowered my voice and then said, the kids claim that there's some boys toy here wanting my attention. Her eyes widened. Sebastian, she said, please don't tell me this is true. I said while my voice cracked. She sat me down on the couch and told me to tell her everything that happened. When I told her about the toy, she had recalled it happening every other night. But they've gotten used to it over the years. I don't know how they managed to do that that honestly. Later on, she ended up explaining that the family who lived there before them had a four year old son who had apparently died in the house. The family moved out soon after. By the time this family moved in, Tracy was a newborn baby. When she became a toddler, the mother had noticed how Tracy would talk by herself. And as she grew a bit older, she was able to express herself more and more. She would say this Sebastian was sad and always wanted to play, especially at night. The mom naturally thought it was just an imaginary kid. But as days would pass, Tracy would make it look realistic that someone was actually there. She recalled hearing her argue with literally no one and how one of her toys went missing. Then it later appeared in the locked shed that they have in the backyard. It was impossible for Tracy to put it there. This had creeped the parents out and decided to look up their house's history in hopes that nothing tragic had occurred, when in fact it did. They realized that a little boy had passed away with not too much information on it. This was devastating to them. They decided that they had to deal with it since this little boy wasn't harming anyone. It was also clear that only Tracy could communicate with Sebastian. Neither Mike or Sally can, but they grew up knowing that that was Tracy's friend. When they notice Tracy staying up late at night playing and talking, they simply know the routine of telling her to stop and to tell Sebastian that it's time for bed. The mother said, darlene, honey, Tracy had already told me about Sebastian liking you ever since you started babysitting them. But I had told her not to tell you anything because it may startle you or you wouldn't believe her. But now you see that Sebastian desperately wanted to catch your attention. He's a good kid. It would really destroy all of us to see you leave and no longer babysit for this family. But if that's what you end up deciding, it's understandable. In reality, Sebastian didn't do any harm and actually made me feel bad for him. Of course, this happened unexpectedly, and for four years of babysitting these children, I've never experienced such a thing. Maybe Sebastian really did want attention after so long. Besides, I couldn't leave my babies. As I stated earlier, I truly see them as my own. So I decided to just keep babysitting them. After that experience, I babysat them two more times. Nothing really extraordinary ever happened other than having some things misplaced or just appear out of nowhere like the first encounter. I've slowly gotten used to it, but it's not quite easy. I never really believed in the paranormal, but you really have to live it yourself in order to have your mind changed completely.

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[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

It was the summer of 1987. I was 16 and my friend Tank and I were looking to make some extra cash. We thought babysitting some of the neighborhood kids was probably the easiest way to do this. We put our advertisement in the local newspaper and soon got a couple of calls. We had started to become more and more popular and had started getting jobs left, right and center. Our one condition? We had to be together apart from the occasional troubled child. It was lots of fun and we were getting great money out of it. One night at about 9pm, a woman called us and asked us if we would watch her son for a couple of hours as she had a work emergency at the hospital which she worked at. She offered to pay us double so we accepted. Tank had his permit so he drove us to our gigs and I packed the lunches. I quickly packed some PB sandwiches and one ham because Tank is allergic to peanuts. We quickly got in the car and we were on our way. The drive only took us about 10 minutes and when we got there we found a Note on the door saying that it was unlocked. We found it unusual that the mother had just left her son at home in an unlocked house. But we didn't think too much about it. We went inside and pretty much imminently we were met with an extremely unusual smell. It smelt of bleach and the kind of stuff that your mom uses to clean the windows. We called out for the boy, whose name was Maximus. No reply. We looked everywhere. The kitchen, upstairs, the bathroom, the laundry room. We even went into the bedrooms thinking that he might have gone to bed already, but no luck. This was starting to quit creep us out and the house was very unsettling. There was not a thing out of place and no sign a child even lived there. We were walking back down the stairs to call the mother when we had saw a room that we hadn't checked yet. Tank and I walked towards it and he opened the door slowly. That was when we saw it. A lifelike human sized stuffed doll sitting on a child's bed just staring at at us. Tank and I were both in shock. We didn't know what to do. This was when the phone in the kitchen then rang. Tank and I were quick to answer it. We also just wanted to get the hell out of that room. I picked it up and on the other end was the mother. She asked us if we could get Maximus ready for bed and to have him asleep by 10:30. Then she told me his pajamas are on his bed where he's sitting. My stomach dropped. Um, you mean the doll, right? I asked. She hung up on the phone pretty much instantly. Tanga looked at me and asked what she had said. I just looked back at him and said, I think that this woman thinks this doll is her child. Tank then laughed, then realizing I was serious. Um, do you want to get the hell out of here? Tank asked. Yeah, I really do. We ran out of the house, but as we got out of the front door and onto our porch, Tank had tapped me on the shoulder. What's that? He pointed at something. We had walked over to take a closer look and standing there amongst the perfectly trimmed grass was a tombstone. It read Maximus Jones 1870. We never babysit again after that creepy ass experience. Although Tank and I are still friends to this day. For some background info, I was babysitting my three younger sisters. I rarely see them as I didn't and still don't have an amazing relationship with my father ending with my me moving in with my mother full time. My father constantly had some type of excuse for me to come over or straight up say manipulative things just to get me over to his house though. I want to make it very clear that this story isn't about my father, but he was very abusive to me all throughout my childhood and towards my mother when they were together. I love my siblings very much but I know that they're safe at my father's house. I was the oldest kid and I think it had a play in why I was treated the way I was. But anyways, back to the story. It was 2020 and at the time my father lived in a nice big house. The layout is confusing so I'll try to explain it to the best of my ability. Two of my sisters Amaia and Amy's room was located in the basement. By then the basement wasn't really a basement, it was where the garage was as well as the back doors which led to the pool and backyard. Basically when you walk down the stairs you can see the downstairs living room setup and then past that was Amaia and Amy's room. Right before their rooms was a guest bedroom that had a closet, storage room and a bathroom. Inside of was also very open as it was supposed to have a barn like door but instead was just an open door frame with no door. When you walk up the stairs at the top there are two doors, one leading to the kitchen and the other leading to Lily's room. At this time Lily was around 5 years old while Amaya and Amy were both 10 years old. Now back to the story. It was around 11pm when we were all chilling in the basement just 30 minutes before. I had no knocked the curtains down that were on the back door because I had opened it up too wide. This happened quite often so it wasn't a shock. The girls didn't like that the curtains weren't up as it was two glass doors and it was late at night meaning it was pitch black outside. We lived in the woods and there had been sightings of a bear roaming around. I really didn't feel like getting a stool and putting them up just then so I told them I would pick it up later and sat back down on the couch continuing to watch Big time Rush. The girls were preoccupied with playing school or something. I didn't bother to play with them as Lily prefers Amy and Amaia over me, which I completely understand. I could tell that Lily was getting moody as it was hours past her usual bedtime. I had let her stay up a few hours later knowing it would upset her if we were having fun without her. I assumed that the older girls and I would just watch a movie. After Lily went down, I asked Amy and Amaia to take Lily upstairs so I could pick up the mess. The three of them ran upstairs and into Lily's bedroom, slamming the door behind them. I could hear them giggling loudly and the last thing I wanted was for Lily to not go to sleep. I had then yelled get Lily and her PJs from the basement while getting a stool from the guest bedroom. All of the giggling had stopped. Assuming they were getting Lily settled down, I pulled the stool up to the window and grabbed the curtains and curtain rod. I was putting the curtains back up when I had heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I didn't hear Lily's door nor the kitchen door open or close. I hadn't turned around, assuming it must have been one of the girls. Either way, in the glass reflection, I saw the top of someone's head behind the couch, kinda like the root of one's hair. I then turned around confused on why they'd be behind the couch like that. You know, unless they were actually plotting to scare me. I stood on the stool as I watched it walk into the guest bedroom. It was around the height of Lily, so you can guess who I assumed it would have been. I got off the stool and then crept in the guest room. I had planned on scaring who I assumed was Lily. Well, as I walked into the guest room, I looked around and saw no one. I looked under the desk and around the bed. No one was there. I thought about whether it had gone in one of the three doors located in the bedroom, but all of those specific doors were very creaky and they were all currently closed. I was honestly scared so I happily skipped out on checking what was behind those doors. I then turned around and ran upstairs. I walked into Lily's room and did a head count. One, two, three. Yep, they were all three there. What the actual fuck did I just see? Who did I see? I was shaking. I've had a panic attack disorder for quite some time and I have to take medication to prevent them from happening. Like a few tears can literally turn into a full blown panic attack. I didn't want to scare my sister so I just simply asked if anyone had just been downstairs, which they all denied. I was shaken up but I had masked it the best I could. Eventually Lily fell asleep and the girls and I were watching watching some movie. I think it was Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Time had passed and it was around 1am the girls were both asleep on the couch And I was left awake. Something had made me feel like I needed to look into the reflection of the glass doors. The curtains had been left open from letting the dogs outside, I assume. I peered into the window and to my utter shock, I saw the small person thing, yellow yet again. It was now facing the back door. It's embarrassing to say because I'm honestly quite interested in the paranormal, but I then quickly hid under my blanket and started quietly crying until I fell asleep. I woke up before the other girls and I decided to get up and take a good look all around the house. I wasn't sure what I was even looking for, just something to explain what the hell I saw the night before. Once the girls woke up, I had still acted as if nothing happened. I ended up telling the two older girls in private, not wanting the youngest to hear. They both probably thought I was crazy, which is completely understandable. I myself even thought I may have been crazy. Eventually my parents came home and they also thought I was full of shit. Since then, my father and sisters have moved. I've experienced many more paranormal things since then, but that was one of my first experiences.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

In the summer of 1989, just before I turned six years old, my family and I lived in a small duplex at the end of a cul de sac. We had lived there since I was about one or two years old. Our duplex was said back back a ways from the street. There was a tiny driveway between our door and the street that we had shared with a few other duplexes, but it wasn't much longer than a typical driveway, just wider. We became close friends with a family that lived directly across the street. Their house was right up along the sidewalk in a single family home. They were an older man and woman whose youngest daughter still lived with them, and they also had custody of their young granddaughter due to some issues that their oldest daughter had with drugs. Their youngest daughter was a year older than my sister and their granddaughter was just a little younger than me. It was nice to have someone closer to my age to play with. My sister is four and a half years older than me and way too cool to hang out with a little kid. She was happy to have an older friend to hang out with too. Anyhow, we were always going over to each other's houses and they were more like extended family than friends. So when the older couple asked my mom to keep an eye on their house while they went out dancing, of course she obliged. Their daughter was babysitting the granddaughter, as she had done several times before. And they just wanted someone else that they trusted to keep an eye out. They had three big aggressive dogs out

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

back that really only only liked the

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

older couple and would attack anyone else. So there wasn't much worry of intruders. It was a good neighborhood, and back then neighbors had keys to each other's houses, even though most rarely locked their doors. Every 20 or so minutes my mom would call their house just to check in. It was just the usual.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Are you two okay? Need anything? Okay, I'll check back in a little while.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

And then she would hang up. Now, before we proceed with the story, I should probably mention their house was always very dark and it had the feeling then the darkness wasn't just a lack of lighting, but more like a complete saturation of the shadows within it. I know it sounds weird, but I'm sure that some or most of you can relate. It seems we've all had an experience with a place like that at some point in our lives. After some time went by, my mom picked up the phone and dialed their number. It just rang and rang. Now. Call waiting had just become a thing earlier that year, but not everyone had it, and none of us on that little dead end street did. So my mom grew concerned. But she hung up and decided to wait a few minutes and then try again. Maybe they were using the bathroom or eating and couldn't get to the phone on time. As soon as she set the phone on the receiver, it rang. She jumped because she hadn't expected it. She lifted it and then answered.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Hello?

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

Static came from the other line and it was loud. I remember her yanking the phone from her ear and then shouting into it.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Hello? Aileen, is that you?

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

The static seemed to get louder and then more quiet and then backed aloud. I remember hearing the faint sounds of a child crying and a girl shouting back.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

But the static was too loud.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

My mom shouted, and to the receiver, still holding it about a foot from

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

her face, I'm gonna call right back. There's a bad connection.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

Then she put down the phone. As she picked it up to redial, something caught my eye from out of our living room window. The window faced the tiny driveway that we shared with a few other duplexes in the street and ultimately the front of the house. I walked about three steps over to that window and looked across the street. Now remember, I'm almost 6 years old, so things don't immediately sink in for me at this age as being odd or out of the ordinary. I'm just seeing what I'm seeing as I'm watching. The lights in the windows of the two front rooms are blinking wildly on and off the porch light too. My mom was on her third redial and putting her shoes on when I heard Aileen answer in a frantic state. I couldn't hear her exhaust exact words, but she was hysterical and my mom just shouted over to stay there and she was going to come over there. She hung up and told me to

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

lock the door after her.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

She shouted to my sister, who was listening to cassettes back in our room, that she'd be right back. She got the keys for their house

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

and a baseball bat, and I followed

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

her to the door, where I promptly locked it.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

After she stepped out, I went back

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

to the window and watched her run across the driveway, which was gravel across the road, through the little gate at their front yard, and then up the steps of the porch. The blinking stopped as soon as she crossed the threshold of their gate with only the porch light remaining on. I watched as my mother tried desperately to open their wrought iron screen door.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

I could see her struggling with the

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

doorknobs and alternating between yanking at the door and banging on it. She was standing with her legs apart to brace herself as she yanked and pulled on the door. Something at the bottom step of the porch caught my eye. A black shadow on all fours climbed out from the bushes that grew on either side of the porch steps. I was terrified, as I knew their three dogs were very vicious to anyone besides the older couple. It moved fluidly, unlike any dog I'd ever seen and sort of slunk up the stairs. It seemed like it had bigger shoulders than any dog, but that was in

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

retrospect, because at the time I was

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

standing there, standing in horror, waiting to see my mom be attacked by this big black dog. She continued to bang and scream, and that's when it happened. The dog seemed to tiptoe slowly up to my mom and just disappear right through her legs and into the door. Like it went right through the wrought iron and solid wood doors and was just gone. The lights flickered on and off again in the front rooms for a few seconds, and then suddenly the wrought iron door swung open and my mom fell back, nearly rolling backwards down the steps. She got up and went to work on getting the wood door open. She disappeared inside, leaving the door open, and was gone for a few good minutes. In that time the wood door moved back and forth, but not like wind was pushing. Seemed very choppy, almost glitchy, if you could imagine that. I could see lights flickering on and off inside of the house and I thought I saw a dark figure standing upright in the doorway. When it had reopened all the way. I was staring so intently that when my mom emerged suddenly carrying the granddaughter with Aileen following right behind, it really startled me. They ran across the road up the little driveway, and I hurried over to unlock the door for them. The girls were crying when. When everyone stumbled into our house. My mom was trying to calm down the granddaughter and trying to get answers from Eileen about what happened. My mom's face was white as a sheet and her eyes were big. Looking back now, I can register the amount of fear she felt. A win was going on about how they were in the den at the back of the house watching a movie and they heard something crash in the front room. There was a large area of wall that. That was opened up sort of like a window between the den and the kitchen. And the same thing from the kitchen to the front room created a sort of openness from the front area through the house to the den. Ailen said that when she stood up to look through to the front room, she saw a large black figure standing in the front room. It was huge, bigger than any man she'd ever seen, and he didn't seem fully solid. The lamp that lit the front room and its light wasn't completely blocked out by the figure. She could kind of see through it. She screamed and grabbed the granddaughter and ran into the bathroom that was off

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

to the side of the den.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

She locked the door, thinking it was an intruder, and tried calling my mom from the phone in that bathroom. The phone was also a toilet paper holder. Yeah, the 80s were a strange time. She said that she couldn't get through at first and that all she could hear was was a deep voice laughing on the line. When she finally got through, though, it was laughing so loudly she didn't know if my mom could hear her shouting for help. This must have been the exact moment when my mom heard the static, when my mom was trying to redial and there was no answer. It was because they heard banging on the bathroom door. This bathroom had another door that led into one of the bedrooms. And even the though she was terrified, Aileen led the little one into that room, locked the door to the bathroom, and then ran across to lock the other door that led to the hallway. She grabbed the phone in that room and took it into the closet and stacked several boxes in front of her and the little one, putting themselves as deep into the corner of that closet as possible. The phone rang and my mom answered it. It was Aileen Hysterically trying to relay her message of fear through gasps and mumbled phrases. My mom just told her that she was on her way and left.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

She said that the whole time they

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

waited in that closet, she could hear snarls and grunting and things breaking in other rooms. The dogs in the backyard were going wild, barking like crazy. She heard the door of the bedroom open and someone or something huge slowly walking toward the closet.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

She said the footsteps sounded loud and

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

heavy and she could hear very heavy breathing. Just then the doorbell rang and she heard banging on the door. It was my mom desperately trying to get inside.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

She was way too terrified to move

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

from the closet, so they waited until my mom got inside. She said it seemed like forever my mom had gone into that house yelling for them and flickering lights on. When she got into the room they

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

were in, they called out to her

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

and she dug them out of the closet and brought them back. I had just been quiet the whole time, just listening. I was waiting for my turn to speak. My mom got up and went to go get them some water and some tissues to wipe their tear streaked faces. As they were sniffling, I decided that it was my turn to speak and I asked, but what was that big dog and why did it go through the door? What do you mean? My mom replied. She had stopped walking midway back to the sofa where the girls were sitting at. I was still standing in the middle of the room. When you were on the porch fighting with the door, I saw a huge,

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

black, shadowy dog walk out of the

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

bushes, up the porch steps and through your legs. It then disappeared right through the door. How did you not see it? It was right there. I was pointing at the window in the direction of their house. Once more the poor blood rushed from my mom's face and she nearly dropped the cup of water. I. I don't know what you mean. The dogs were in the backyard. I heard them barking. She replied, sounding as if her throat

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

was dry as a desert.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

It wasn't shaped like those dogs. Its shoulders were too big and it moved like smoke. It went right through your legs. I became frustrated that she wouldn't answer me. Why was she avoiding it? Well, what was it, Mom? How did it crawl straight through the door? She stood there, frozen, tears welling up in her eyes. I don't know if she was afraid that I might be seeing things or that she went into a dark house

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

right after that thing.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

She finally blinked a single tear rolling

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

down that she quickly wiped away, and

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

she handed the girl some tissues and a cup of water. She turned to me and looked at me in a way I'll never forget and then simply said, you saw nothing. You imagined it. And she continued consoling the girls. They called the bar that the older couple had gone dancing at and had them paged. When they called back, my mom explained what happened and they rushed home, police arriving soon after. The police searched the whole house and found nothing. No sign of forced entry, no person or people. The there were many broken knick knacks and decorations throughout the house, as well as weird scratches on some walls and on the bathroom door that leads to the den. In the end, they just assumed it was an intruder. They said my mom must have scared them off when she came for the kids, and since they ran out leaving the door wide open, the suspects most likely just snuck away. Nothing was missing from the house since that day. I only mentioned a my mother one other time of seeing dark shadow people. She looked at me the same terrified way she had that night and I never brought it up again. I hated that look. It made me feel wrong or bad. I started thinking about all of the absurd, unexplained things I'd seen for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory started around 2 years old and I can remember lots of things like ice staring back at me from dark corners, dark shadows during broad daylight, things disappearing and reappearing in other

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

rooms or days later, or things moving

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

in my peripheral vision. But I never knew that other people didn't see this stuff until that day. I'm an adult now and I still fear the dark. I almost always have that feeling that something is watching me. But now I hesitate to look back. I fear what I might see, knowing

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

since I was 6 years old that

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I shouldn't have seen that stuff at all. That hasn't stopped me from having dozens of other terrifying experiences and still seeing things that I can't explain. Maybe I'll share more sometime. I almost died when my mom gave birth to me. My heart slowed down so much they

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

couldn't register it at all.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

My mother was almost rushed into emergency

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

surgery when I finally came out blue and unresponsive.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

They revived me, obviously, but I wonder

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

if that brush with death opened my

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

eyes to what's beyond this world. And now that they know I can see them, they make it a point to show themselves to me. When I was in the third grade, my family moved into this house in a really nice and quiet neighborhood. It had a big front yard and a gateway gated backyard where we kept our dogs. A nice home to Grow up in. Not soon after, we found out it was haunted. My sister and I didn't really know, but my mother had various experiences that led her to leaving Bibles under the bed open to specific scriptures and blessing all of the doors with a cross made from oil. Now, my sister and I would spend the night over at our cousin's house during the summer. Sometimes we'd go to his his house and sometimes he'd come to our house. One summer he came and stayed with us. We were a few years older now and fully aware of the odd things going on in the house, but never had real experiences until after this incident. My cousin, my sister and I turned the living room into our sleeping area.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

The TV was set up so we

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

could watch movies and snack on popcorn. But eventually we slept on the floor with all of our blankets. It was in the middle of the night. I'm not sure what time it was exactly, but I remember my cousin waking me up because he had to go to the bathroom and didn't want to go alone. Being the oldest, of course, this was my duty. So we walked down the hall to the bathroom. Soon enough, we were back in the living room. Now in the living room, one side led to the hallway where the bathroom and bedrooms were.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

This.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

The other side led to the kitchen, dining area and door to the den. When we got back and got in our spots on the floor, we were facing the dining area where the door to the den was, which was wide open. From the door, the head of a clown appeared. My cousin and I sat there in complete shock because we were having a hard time understanding what was going on. The face was so frightening, with such a weird grin and evil eyes. It looked straight at us and passed through the dining room, floating toward us.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

The closer it got, the bigger the head got.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

We were frozen in fright. But the moment the head was fully inside of the living room, on the other side, where the doorway to the hall was, appeared a woman. She had long black hair. Her face was blurred, so we couldn't really see who she was. She had a long blue or purple dress and held a lit candle in her hands, just like my cousin. And I noticed her. So did the clown, who now grew a full body and walked back through the dining room and then disappeared into the den. Once he was gone, she was gone too. This all happened so fast that we both just looked at each other in disbelief. But we knew that we both experienced it together. The very next morning, we had told my mom about what happened.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Of course she believed us.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

But she said that we had been protected by an angel. After that we had a lot more experiences with ghosts. Beds shaking, shadows walking by, disembodied voices, a pillow being pulled from under me, even an experience of sleep paralysis. We lived in that house for years and just really adapted to the ghost experiences until we were eventually forced to move, but by that time I was in my 20s. Since moving out, I haven't had any more experience experiences with ghosts like I did in that house, but I always wonder if the people living there now are going through the same things we did.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Who really knows though?

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I won't give my name or location specifics, but you can call me Pops and I live in the us. I've been listening to these channels for a while now and I want to submit some of my own creepy experiences I had growing up in my childhood home. I'll first start off with an experience that was surely bizarre, yet in the end also a bit humorous as it's been a long time ago. I'm 36 now and this was likely in my teens as many of these experiences are. I do remember waking up for whatever reason and looking at my bedroom door which was open. I don't remember if something drew my attention or I was just scanning the room, but I saw something odd at the bottom of the door. Peeking around the side was a cat looking back at me. Now, I've always had cats growing up, but this one was not mine. I want to say that it was white, but I can't be 100% sure. Confused, I got up from bed and started toward naturally ran thinking that a door might be open or a window had torn a screen. I ran out to investigate.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Right outside my bedroom was a very

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

small laundry room which led into the kitchen. Just a couple of feet from the laundry room door was my back door. As I stepped into the kitchen, I saw through the shut and locked back door that the cat was fleeing across my back deck.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

The back door had glass panels so

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I could easily see through it.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

I believe I just found it odd

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

and just shrugged it off and went to bed. I never found a torn screen or open window or anything that it could have entered and exited from. Now things started to get a bit creepier. An experience I often had was hearing voices and mummering and a woman singing. This was always as I lay in the dark trying to fall asleep. The voices sounded as if they were

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

far off somewhere in the background.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I couldn't make out any words, but it was obvious it was people conversing. It's Very unlikely. It was my parents as they were

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

always sound asleep across the house this

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

time and it sounded like more than two people. It was scary, but I never felt threatened, just weirded out.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

The lady was a bit different again.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I didn't feel threatened, but her voice just sounded so melancholy, as if when she sang she did with such great sorrow. I knew for sure this couldn't have been my mom. It scared me at first, but after a while I became more used to

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

got to where the murmurs were more annoying and the singing made me feel sad.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I have two more experiences I would like to share and these are the ones that really terrified me. The first one probably happened sometime when I was in middle school. I was in bed and in that floating state where I wasn't fully asleep, but one wasn't fully conscious either. When you have just enough awareness to be aware but not realize it. Suddenly and involuntarily I jolted up, staring once again at my bedroom door. There was a mirror on the wall close to the door and in it I could see a figure reflected standing at my bedroom door. The figure looked dirty and nasty, almost like the color of rust and dirt mixed together.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

All I could really see was its head.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

The best way I can describe its hair, or at least what I made

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

out to be its hair was like

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

several neck length dreads in small sickle shapes. It's hard to describe. The dreads in his hair just narrowed into a point like a sickle. It just stood there slowly nodding its head up and down. Its hair covered its eyes and its

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

face was too dirty to make out any real features.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

I think I saw a mouth, but I can't be completely sure. I was frozen with fear and I couldn't move until finally it just vanished again. I knew it couldn't have been one of my parents. They wouldn't have pulled such a prank in the first place and they would have needed to step backwards in order

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

to get out of sight.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

Not being able to simply disappear. I know a lot of people will chalk this up to sleep paralysis, but I don't believe that's what this was. I've never had any type of sleep

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

paralysis before or after, and I've never heard of someone actually being able to move before becoming overtaken by fear, rendered unable to move.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

This was also before YouTube and therefore way before sleep paralysis became such a well known phenomenon. I didn't get up afterwards or try

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

to get my parents or anything.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

Somehow I just made myself feel fall back asleep. The final experience I want to share was One day when I awoke, I had the day off and it was

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

a summer day, or at least a

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

warm enough day to spend outdoors.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Therefore, I wanted to get out and

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

hang out with a friend that I've known for pretty much all my life. This was back before cell phones that weren't those comically bulky ones businessmen kept in their cars. Therefore, I had to use a landline.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

However, when I picked the receiver up,

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

there was no dial tone. The phones were mostly all cordless by then, so I figured one of my

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

parents who were away at the time,

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

had accidentally left one off the hook. Not thinking much of it, I went around but couldn't see any that were

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

readily visibly off the hook.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

Again, I didn't think much of it and figured one was not quite set fully in the cradle and just looked like it was. However, upon checking each phone by putting it up to my ear, there was still no dial tone and I knew the phone service wasn't down. I finally found a phone which was clearly out of the cradle in the computer room. This did make me feel a bit uncomfortable, but I was able to chalk it up to simply having been a bit tired, still having recently awoken and simply not noticing at first. That is, until right as I put the put the phone back in the cradle, I heard a sound from downstairs that sounded as if someone was moving around. It was way too big to be any of the cats or any other animal that could have feasibly made its way into the basement.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Knowing there could be a logical explanation,

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

but also fearing it could be an intruder, I set about getting a large knife from the kitchen and starting to head down into the basement. I opened the basement door and proceeded

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

to switch on the light at the

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

top of the stairs. It was, and still is, one of those pull cord lights. This lit up the stairs, but the

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

interior of the basement was still dark

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

beyond the foot of the stairs. Planning to slowly and cautiously make my way down into the basement while turning

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

on each light as I got there, I was just about to start down

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

the stairs when I could clearly hear something furiously charging up them. I could hear each pounding step thundering on each staircase. However, even as the stairs were clearly lit, I could see no one. I could literally hear them on the stairs running right at me, but no one was there. All of my bravery evaporated at that

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

point and I turned and ran from

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

the house via the friend door. When I did so, my friend I was originally trying to call was sitting

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

on a log across the road.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

He looked at me puzzled as I

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

ran out of the house.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

So I ran over to him, calmed myself down and and then told him what happened. I know for sure it couldn't have been him. There was no way he could have gotten into my locked basement, ran up the stairs, but somehow have been invisible then get out of my basement, lock it back up and then get across the street before I could make the short dash out of my house. There's just no way he could have done that. So yeah, these are my stories and I still have no idea what it was.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

My name is Maddie and this is my story. This is a story that I'm still not entirely sure about. I've racked my brain in every way trying to come up with the explanation. I can't help but feel like something followed me home that week. When I was 13, my mom's co worker had a daughter who needed a babysitter for her three. Three kids. I'll call her Kelly. She had three young children who were around eight, five and three. They're not super relevant to this story. Kelly lived nearly a block away from me so it was easy enough to walk there and back since I hadn't been at the age to start driving. Nothing ever happened with the kids as I normally babysit them after school before their dad came home, which was around 44 to 5pm however, the story happened in their house when they weren't home. There were two separate occasions before this happened. The kids had a little TV set up in the basement with their various toys. One time I went to get one of the kids and had the most gut sinking feeling going into the basement. I can't explain it. The other time I babysat for them while they went to a football game. Game. I couldn't help but shake the feeling someone or something was watching me. I was terrified and I had a friend stay on the phone with me. I swore that I wouldn't go back now for the story. Kelly had texted me saying they were leaving town for a week and asked if I could come by in the morning and in the evening just to feed and let out their two dogs. I agreed since I wouldn't have to spend much time there. Kelly had given me the code for the door immediately. On the first day when I walked into the house, it reeked of rotten eggs, like something was left to die. I let the dogs out and fed them and everything was fine. I walked past the basement and couldn't help but feel sick. I couldn't even open the door to look in the second and third day were fine as well as the smell seemed to disappear. I really didn't have an explanation for it. On this day, however, the puppy whom they had stay in the kennel refused to go back in. She simply sat barking at nothing. I literally had to forcefully pick her up and then put her in the kennel. On the fourth day, I was outside with the dogs, letting them do their business when it sounded like something fell over in the basement. I was sitting in the living room waiting for the dogs. That was enough for me. I brought the dogs in and swear that I heard footsteps approaching. I was about to call 911, but first I had called my dad as he had headed over and peered into the basement to see absolutely nothing. I couldn't sleep. I was having nightmares about that house and being trapped in the basement. I also told my friend about it who is very superstitious and into the supernatural. And she advised me to bring salt. I did so and on the last day I felt that horrible feeling. And then that smell came back stronger than ever. I quickly fed the dogs and didn't look back. Once again, I couldn't sleep. Having nightmares of being locked in the basement with no way out. I dreamt of a little boy who was in the basement with me, begging me to help him escape. After a few days later. Later I was walking up the stairs of her home, my sister behind me. She asked me what the hell happened to my neck. Confused, I had asked her what she meant. I had six long diagonal scratches down my neck. I had no idea where it came from. That feeling of being watched came over me again a few nights after my sister and I were talking at the dining room table. She told me that she felt like she was being watched in the basement and that the temperature seemed to fluctuate. Things seemed to go missing. I had felt the same things, but I never told her. So I then talked to my aforementioned friend and she suggested saging and salting the house. I did so and the feelings went away. I had this weird feeling about going to a graveyard near my house. So I googled graveyard etiquette. I left pennies and then carefully wandered the cemetery. A weird flash of relief came over me as I had found a grave with a school picture. The little boy from my dream. He died in 2001, the same year I was born. That night I had a dream the little boy and I were walking on the beach. And he then said, thank you for not forgetting about me. I knew you wouldn't. I'm really sorry that this seems all over the place. I'm 22 years old now and I have no intention of ever going near Kelly's house again. As for our own house, everything has been calm since. I don't know if I believe in the supernatural, but I do know that something is not right in that house. This all happened in 2011 when I was living in Limor, California. Now, I'm very skeptical whenever it comes to the paranormal. I do believe in it, but I still look for logical explanations before jumping to such conclusions. But having lived in that house and with all the shared experience, I cannot deny that the house was in fact haunted. These are compiled experiences from me and my family. First, here's some background. This all took place in a two story duplex and almost every night the neighbor's kid, who was at least four years old, would cry bloody murder. Every night. My parents would be the first to know because their room was separated by a thin wall. The neighbors tried to calm him down, but it never worked. To where they had a child psychologist visit twice a week. Yeah, that didn't work either. It was so frequent that it basically forced our neighbors to move away after just four months of being there. The very first encounter came from my mom. My dad went on a business trip and how it goes is it was around midnight while my mom was taking a shower. She had heard a loud commotion outside the bathroom. She assumed it was me and my siblings making a racket. During the late hours. She yelled and told whoever was making the loud commotion to go back to bed. It all went quiet and what followed was the hardest and loudest. Bangs on the bathroom door. She rushes and opens the door to find the room completely empty and the house quiet. The same unexplainable occurrence happened two more times that year. Some days later, after a long day out of the house, we all came back to see a number of kitchen units, utilities and dishes broken and scattered across the kitchen floor. Like someone broke in and just smashed everything up. However, the house was locked up and no door was broken. I would assume this next encounter from my dad to just be sleep paralysis, but to this day, my dad thinks it was something else. So my mom would sometimes, while she was sleeping, feel a heavy weight like someone was on top of her. She'd sometimes assumed my dad was laying up again against her, but she'd later find herself alone in the room or my dad still on the opposite side of the bed anyways. So one night my dad wakes up, not really entirely conscious at first. He has a weird feeling and turns to See a figure standing at the foot of my mom's side of the bed. My dad had described it to be very tall and thin and how bright and visible the eyes of the figure were. The figure was at first looking at my dad before then turning to stare at my mom. And then the figure would sidestep closer and closer to my mom, still looking at her. My dad couldn't get up and he said the only thing he could do was growl at it. The figure stopped and looked at him and would still sidestep closer. My dad grounded it one more time and it stopped, turned around, and then walked out of the room. Whether that was sleep paralysis or not, it spooked my dad enough to where he had started making plans to move to different housing. The next one happened to me. I was sleeping on a bunk bed and I woke up in the middle of the night to see my closet door open. When I remember it being closed and empty, it wasn't clear, but I saw a highlighted face in the closet. What it looked like was the face of Mad magazine. I woke up my brother, who was on the tom bunk, and I asked him if he saw it too, which he did. I knew then that it wasn't just my mind messing with me. And I remember seeing its eyes fixate from me to my brother and then back to me. We quickly ran out of the room to get our parents, who came back to see the closet empty. My dad didn't get mad because he himself was also spooked from his own experience. And that night really did spirit speed up the moving process. We left to another neighborhood with no encounters until the very last night where my little brother screamed bloody murder in the middle of the night, saying that he saw a head peer out of his closet. I'd never seen him to this day that petrified. We went to a hotel that night and we never went back to that house. And I never want to again. I don't know how relevant this one story is, but my brother brought back an old noose buried in a large dirt field. After a while, he had managed to undo the knot and tied the rope under the tree in our front yard as a swing. I also later found out that the area where he uncovered it was once a prison in the early 1900s. So maybe they're associated. But bottom line, the house on the area has a history. And whatever was in that house, if it really was a ghost, it was not the good kind. When I was 16, my mom was searching for a house to rent and she had stumbled upon this elderly couple who was renting out a two story four bedroom house for only $500 a month. When she entered the home, she had noticed a strong scent of cigarettes, but nothing that she couldn't fix. While talking to the couple, they had mentioned that they they had a little girl's bedroom, fully furnished and my little sister could move right in, but that we were not allowed to remove anything in there. My mom had always shared her bed with my little sister anyways, so that was out of the question. I always thought this house had this eerie empty feeling. One of the first nights I was walking down the stairs and my younger sister screamed because she saw a black figure of a girl following me downstairs. Ever since then I had a feeling that the house was haunted. One day I was taking a nap upstairs when a loud bang startled me awake. My older sister came upstairs and asked if I was okay and I told her that it wasn't me that made the loud sound. Then we saw the door to the girls room open and then slam shut and we were so spooked and just watched as it repeatedly kept opening and closing by itself. My sister had tried recording it on her phone, but it kept glitching. So I took out my tablet and recorded a short video and then we ran the hell out of there. As we were leaving, it actually seemed like the spirit got even more angry by us leaving and it then started slamming the door even harder. While living there, we had noticed the light in the little girl's bedroom would randomly turn on by itself. My mom kept seeing a random black cat sitting next to the back door, which kind of creeped me out. While cleaning the house, my mom also found two Ouija boards. She got so spooked that she had bought sage and tried blessing the house of any evil spirits. My mom eventually felt that the sage was useless, so we decided to just leave and find somewhere else to live, which I'm really thankful for because that house truly was really creepy and I'm really glad we got the hell out of there. I'm currently a 38 year old female, but from about 1989 until 2002, I lived in a house that I believe was possibly haunted. For some background, I grew up as an adopted only child with a father

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

who was a Lutheran pastor and mother

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

who was a homemaker. Before we moved into this house, we had lived in rural southern Illinois in a parsonage, which is just a fancy term for a home belonging to a church. It was adjacent to both a church and its accompanying cemetery. As a Little girl under the age of five. I can still completely remember the layout of this first house. I remember odd things happening in that house too. For example, the house had a D den located under the stairs with the door you entered through in the kitchen. I would often take naps in this room on a sofa. I can clearly remember waking up to find small plastic trinkets and candy under my pillow every time I woke up. Being little, I never questioned it and I loved it. However, I asked both my parents many times years later who had put the trinkets and candy there and they both

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

looked at me like.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

Like I was crazy, asking me what I was talking about. They had no reason to lie about it and both of them seemed genuinely puzzled at this. They swore that neither one of them did it. I also remember looking out my bedroom window once as a little girl and seeing a woman in a white dress walking through the cemetery and staring up at me. If I can remember correctly, my dad had a funeral for an older woman a couple of days earlier. I don't know for sure if that was her, but I do wonder. Never once though, had I ever felt afraid of anything in that first house. Once we moved into my second childhood home, I did not receive any more treats after my naps. The layout of my new house was a lot bigger than my old one.

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

This one was three stories with there

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

being two bedrooms on the main floor, a kitchen, a bathroom, a huge living room and dining room, and an office overlooking the front door step. The second floor had a bathroom with a giant storage room where we kept our Christmas stuff right next to it on the right hand wall. Two bedrooms connected by a long hallway, a hall closet with a secret crawl space in the back that went over the top of the living room and another crawl space on the other side of the same bedroom so that the hallway was in kind of a U shape with the bathroom being at the

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

end the of of the U and

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

the stairs at the beginning. There was also a basement where we kept the laundry on one side, with a second pantry and my dad's hobby things on the other, as well as a half bathroom on the laundry side with the stairs being in the middle between them. I suppose it's normal that kids are terrified of their basement, but I was really scared of mine and I would never turn out the light until I was at the top of the steps that led to our kitchen. Pantry on the left, the back door directly at the top of the stairs, and kitchen on the right. Nothing really stands out about my house from the outside as it just looks like a nice normal brick house. But inside there always seemed to be a dark atmosphere overshadowing the home. For starters, as a little girl, I could never sleep in my bedroom with the door closed. I was too afraid and I would often hear breathing and noises from time to time and just wanted the door open so I could run to my parents if I ever got scared. For a long time, I was really frightened of the upper level on the second floor. My mom used one of the bedrooms, the one closest to the bathroom and Christmas storage, as her craft room, which was often extremely messy and hard to walk around, which was due to the amount of stuff all over the floor and piled on a huge table in the center of the room. It was also where she kept a giant antique dollhouse that used to be my grandmother's. I loved playing with it, but I didn't like being upstairs by myself. The dolls that originally went with the dollhouse were the kind that had eyes that would roll back into their heads and they really creeped me out. So I would take my own dolls and toys up there to play pretend from time to time. However, when I was up there, I couldn't hear anything downstairs at all. I would hear noise, noises in the upstairs hallway that sounded like footsteps. If I got creeped out enough, I would dash down the hallway and run down the stairs and then not go back for a while until my fear subsided. But I would return because I always felt like something was beckoning me to come back upstairs. The older I got, the sensation grew in intensity until one day I had finally asked my parents if I could move into the other upstairs bedroom, the one between the two crawl spaces. Now, some people might just think this is just a young girl's imaginations or

[Pops / Various Storytellers]

just normal childhood fears.

[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

But after I moved upstairs around the age of puberty, things started to get weird. Things would go missing around the house and my parents started to blame me for misplacing or taking them what I hadn't. I couldn't stand to be in the house alone, even as a teenager, because the house got very, very creepy. Whenever my parents weren't around, I would be in the downstairs living room and would hear breathing and talking in my parents bedroom closet. I thought that was very strange and it scared me so badly that I grabbed my pet turtle and sat outside on the curb at the end of our driveway for an hour and a half until my parents finally got home. Of course, when they went into their bedroom, they couldn't find anything that could have made Those noises and they just brushed it off as many being a silly teenager. On another day, just for fun, I had knocked on the empty crawlspace door. The door only connecting to the wall by way of a thin wooden plane, covering the opening by strong magnets as well as a metal pull handle. When I knocked on the empty crawlspace door next to my bedroom, I had started to walk away when I had heard three distinct knocks come from the other side of the door. This spooked me so badly that I had told my parents who didn't even believe me, and then never touched the door again. I started to put stuff in front of the door and would dash past it every time I needed to get to my room. In my upstairs bedroom. I never ever left the bedroom door open at night because the hallway itself scared me. I would see moving shadows at night and hear those footsteps and noises outside my door. And noises even in the crawl space attic that ran the length of the hallway outside my room. If I ever needed to go to the bathroom in the night, I would turn on my bedroom light, take my flashlight and then dash down the hall and turn on all the lights I could just to use the toilet. I never saw any actual apparition or anything like that, but like I said, the atmosphere in that house was very dark. One time I mentioned to my dad that the noises were getting louder at night and that it sounded like someone was running back and forth in the attic at night from end to end. And I was tired of it and it scared me. My dad, finally exasperated with me, had agreed to come up and take a look that night. While he did eventually hear the noises, he wasn't really sure what they were, but he did agree that it didn't sound like an animal. And although the church maintenance man did put some up there, nothing was ever caught and the no noises just continued for a bit longer. Now something creepy is in the basement. There were four outlines of child shaped bodies on the wall in paint. It was such a weird thing that I didn't know who had made them or why they were there. It wasn't like it was a mural or any kind of actual painting. It was just four child size shaped body outlines connected to each other with their hands close together on the basement wall close to the basement pantry. Another thing of note was the dreams that me and my family all had during our time in that house. I would have recurring nightmares that would be the same dream over and over again. My dad would constantly have terrible nightmares of something chasing him whenever he slept in his bedroom and I would often have dreams of stabbing a monster in my nightmares. In 2002, my dad had suddenly died one night in a bedroom due to an unknown issue with his heart. By this time I owned dogs and they usually slept in the basement at night because my mom was allergic to pet dander. Well, normally the dogs were fine down there, but after my dad died and my mom threw their bedsheets downstairs to get washed, the dogs would go crazy crying, howling and laying all over the sheets. It was really bizarre. Not long after this, my mom and I had moved out of the church house because since my dad had died we weren't allowed to stay there anymore. But once we moved out, I didn't have any more recurring nightmares and no further issues with any other places I've lived since then. The only other thing of note is that when my own son was in kindergarten he would tell me about a man who would visit him at night wearing a hat. That went on for quite a while and began became somewhat concerning, but we never figured out who or what he was seeing and I never saw the man for myself. The only thing I can think of is that throughout my childhood my dad had owned an Indiana Jones style hat that he would wear all the time and that maybe, just maybe that was actually my dad coming to watch over or visit the grandson that he had never met. Who really knows for sure though?

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[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

I'm a male in my early 30s and I was 14 when this incident happened. It has been almost 20 years ago at this point, but I will never forget this night for as long as I live. For some context, my grandparents My parents lived in a solid gray stone home that they had built in the 1940s just shortly after my grandfather returned from World War II. It was symbolic to them of the American dream. It was the kind of home that they fully intended to live in for their entire lives. But as time went on they had built new additions to make it bigger. It therefore had a weird and unique layout. On one side of the house sat two bedrooms, the master and another smaller bedroom. The bedrooms were named for the color theme of the room with the master bedroom being the blue room and the smaller one being the pink room. Past the bedrooms was a large living room with a creepy ancient grand piano and flowing sheer curtains covering the giant picture window with stained glass in the center. That abated the room in pink and green silver sunshine. Most of the creepiness was the large grandfather clock that shook the house with several chimes which happened every hour on the hour past this room was the kitchen and the original front door to the outside. After my father was born, they had added a large creational room for him and his friends. Later they converted their outdoor garage into a third bedroom and connected it to the house. Needless to say, the third bedroom was about as isolated as you could get in that house. We referred to it as the white room as it featured an old browning white bedspread, white sheer curtains and a fading off white carpet. It had two large walk in closets that were connected by a long inner hallway. Each side featured large accordion style doors. My mom worked a lot growing up so my brother and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house. We grew to really love being there, but it wasn't without its share of strange experiences. We would often stay up late in the rec room watching tv, often to be interrupted by strange noises or have that eerie feeling of being watched. Scratches on the walls, phantom footsteps and creaks. It all just seemed to be part of its charm and we eventually just stopped paying attention to them. It was a typical Friday night and being a nerdy and introverted teen who couldn't drive yet, I'd spend it in the welcome seclusion of the white bedroom. Just playing my Xbox and messing around on the computer as much as dial up would allow. As I was deep into the game of Elder Scrolls, I had felt a chill run down my spine. I noticed that it it was abnormally cold in the room. Not just chilly, but I felt like if it got any colder I would see my breath. This was especially odd as it was a hot summer night in southern Illinois and this Room also didn't have any air conditioning as it used to be a garage. I paused my game, set down the controller, and I rubbed my hands together for warmth, not really sure what to think. Like clockwork, I hear a bang in one of the closets and immediately looked over. To my horror, the accordion doors on one side flew open and then exposed the dark closet. I didn't understand how this happened, and I stood there, shocked. After a few seconds, I had then convinced myself that it must have been my older brother who had surely snuck into the large closet when I went to use the restroom or something of that nature, just to scare me. I then yelled at him, hey, get the hell out of there. You're not funny. No response. In fact, the silence was deafening and the cold stung my skin as goosebumps started to form. I picked up one of the boots that I'd taken off and sat beside the bed. I then threw it at the door as hard as I could. It bounced off and dropped to the floor with a thump, but no other sound. I stared at the door, trying to figure out what was going on and what might happen next, when one side of the accordion door to the closet then rumbled, almost like it was building up to do something. Then it closed and opened up halfway again. Completely freaked out and sure that no one was in there at this point, I bolted out of the bedroom to see my brother sitting quietly in the large rec room, just casually watching a movie on the tv. I then yelled at him to come to the bedroom, and I'd struggled to get the words out to describe what had just happened. Skeptical, he immediately rushed in to check it out, and he couldn't wait to tell me how much of a baby I was for being scared of nothing. As he walked over, we heard another rumble. He threw open the closet door, fist balled up, like deep down that he half expected to fight someone. But there was nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary inside. He then went to pull the light switch to get a better look. It was the typical light switch you see in old closets and basements. A single light bulb hanging down from the ceiling with nothing but a shoestring attached to pull and turn it on. He pulled it and it turned on like normal. But then it grew brighter and brighter, and then the room continued to grow colder until the light went out with a loud, violent electrical pop. It didn't just burn out, it was like it was freaking overcharged or something. Both of us freaked out at this point. We then quickly retreated out of the room and into the kitchen. I slammed the former front door, secluding us from whatever was going on, and my brother and I just looked at each other. Finally, my brother shook his head, clearly about to come up with some dismissive comment about the experience. Just then, the grandfather clock chimed three times, even though it was 11:37pm and it only does that on the hour. The room seemed to shake even more than usual, and then it grew deathly quiet again, confused as hell. At this point, we found no words to say. Just when things couldn't get any more frightening, the silence was broken again by a rapid succession of knocks coming from the other side of the door. We barricaded the door and needless to say, neither of us slept for the rest of the night. As soon as our grandparents woke up, we then rushed to them and explained what happened. We immediately wanted to know if they had ever experienced anything like that in the weird house before. They gave each other a quick glance and then dismissed our experience and any notion of a haunting or any other supernatural force. My grandma commented on there being no such thing as ghosts or spirits, and my grandfather also chimed in, reminding us that they built the house themselves with no other owners having been there before to have died. When my mom got off work, we told her the same retelling of the events. However, she then told us something that my grandparents didn't and for whatever reason, didn't doubt us at all. She very solemnly told us that there had been another tenant in that house just a few years ago. It turns out that when my great grandfather started getting older and unable to take care of himself, my grandparents offered to help him and that's when they converted the garage into a third bedroom and he promptly moved in, filling the large custom closets with his life's possessions. My mom didn't go into much detail. She could tell that we were already tired and freaked out, but she did say that he was bitter about losing his independence and about his declining health as well. He really missed living on his own, fishing, and generally being able to be outdoors. He eventually succumbed to his illness and he died in that bedroom shortly after moving into their house. I returned to that house later in life as my grandparents were finally forced to move before everything inside it went to an auction. I walked into the white bedroom, looking eerily unchanged after all these years. The memories of that night from all those years ago immediately came flooding back, prompting me to put pen to bed before it faded away again. Nothing too spooky occurred on that final visit, but as I turned to leave the Bedroom. I heard a loud creak from the closet and I held my breath as I walked over. It was daytime so I was feeling brave. An old semi abandoned house is certainly known to creak. I opened the closet and much to my relief I didn't see anything. Except I happened to notice something on one of the built in shelves. It held an odd painting on one of the built in shelves. I took it with me and I later found out it was a painting by my great grandfather. One of his last joystick in life was painting the beautiful landscapes of nature that he enjoyed over the years. It was a beautiful flowing river with a fisherman casting into it. My family was very confused as his possessions had been removed ages ago. I like to think being guided to this painting was kind of his way of apologizing for the scare he gave us all those years ago. I don't know if it's true, but that's what it feels like. I'm 52 years old. The time frame this happened when I was 6 to 8 years old. The house and the railway line are now gone. Onto the story. My family and I were living in an old rundown mill house. The house is very close to the tracks. Approximately the was about 250 to 350ft between the house and the tracks. The house always shook every time a train went by. At some point the house was converted into apartments. Believe me this is important. To say that living there was uncomfortable is an understatement. Also trigger warning. My siblings and I dealt with a lot of abuse. The first time I saw the ghost train was in the late spring. My bedroom was the converted kitchen upstairs. The kitchen door was boarded and nailed shut from the below window. My dad did this. He was afraid of me falling out the door. The steps were removed as well. The first sighting was after one of Kathy's inhumane beatings. Kathy was the nanny. I was hiding under my bed curled into a ball. I can't tell you how long I was there for when I then heard the train's whistle. The whistle came in three short bursts. Strange, I know. I slowly crawled out from under the bed and worked my way to the door. I'm not sure what it was, but I'll say it was late. It was so dark and I was scared. I was afraid that Kathy would hear me again and that I would be beaten again. I was crouched down in front of the door and I heard the whistle again. I slowly got up and peeked out of the door window and I froze on the track was a Train that I could see right through. I just stood there, unable to move or look away. It felt like I was standing there for hours and it was probably only a few minutes in reality. The next thing I see is a pale old man with a black and white striped hat leaning out the engine window. Now I'm terrified. I can see right through him. This is where it starts to get strange. I went from terrified to now calm. It was like all the pain, fear and confusion just walk washed all away. His smile was warm and peaceful. He waved, then pulled the whistle and was gone. I mean, the train engine in him just vanished. I remember getting down and crawling back to my bed. I then grabbed my blanket and pillow and I went back under my bed. This area was my safe space in my room. Over the course of the summer, I saw the ghost train quite a bit. Then there was a time where my older sister and I saw it together. It was a late summer day. Her name was Gabby, and we were playing in the front yard. We stopped playing when we saw my dad's work car drive itself over the tracks into the driveway. Gabby ran to Dad's car. She was freaked out because the engine was hot and there was no dad driving it. Gabby then went to mom and Dad's bedroom window. Gabby yelled to mom that Dad's car was hot and now in the driveway, mom called her a liar. Mom said that dad has been home all day. Therefore the car couldn't drive itself into the yard. I went to Gabby and I touched her arm, then gently moved her away from the window. We walked to the other side of the driveway and found our raspberry bush. We were picking raspberries when we then heard a whistle. Both of us jumped and then turned around. There they were, Mr. Conductor and his train. He was smiling and waving, but he never spoke. His presence was peaceful. He had the aura of a loving grandfather. It was strange. Gabi and I knew evil. We were living with it. But Mr. Conductor didn't have that energy. During the winter of 1977-1978, Gabby and I saw Mr. Conductor and his ghost train in intervals. Looking back at it now, the only variable to seeing him was the level of pain we were in. He seemed to always show up whenever Kathy upped her abuse. The night he almost took us away was a changing point for both Gabby and I. Off my bedroom was Gabby's room. You had to walk into my room past the outside door to the back wall. Kathy had tried to drown me. The bathroom was upstairs. To be honest, I'm not really sure how Gabby was able to break the lock of the bathroom. Gabby was about 10, 11 years old at this time. I was barely with it. And I can still see Gabby in all of her mad glory running right towards Kathy and nailing her upside the head with a frying pan. Gabby pulled me out of the tub and got me upstairs to the bedroom. She helped me dry off and get my PJs on. Gabby then gently patted my back as I coughed. We both didn't speak, just sat on the floor feeling defeated while playing jacks. We were unable to sleep. I was hoping for my dad to come home. I had really hoped that he would catch her in the act so he could haul her fucking fat ass off to jail. My dad was a police officer by the way. Mom was a security guard. They both worked nights, hence the need for the psycho nanny. I'm not sure what time it was, but it was late. Both of our parents were working. They usually left home around 11pm My best guess is that it was around 2 in the morning when the rest of this all went down. As Gabby and I sat there, we got startled by a bright light. Then we heard that familiar whistle. We turned to get up so we could look out the door window. Hold onto my beer. This is where it gets totally fucked up. Now remember how the outside stairs were removed? The door had gotten all boarded up. Gabby and I watched each nail in the door barricade come out and then hit the floor. We just stood there watching. When the board fell, the door opened and stepped in. Mr. Conductor. We couldn't see through him this time. He appeared as solid as the living. He was smiling. It was a very warm and safe feeling. He held out his arms and I took Gabby's hand. We were both now walking right towards Mr. Conductor. Gabby and I just started to take his hand when out of nowhere I felt an arm around my stomach. I could feel myself being pulled backwards and I looked over at Gabby. There was an arm around your stomach? Then I got the shock of my life. It was my dad. Right at that moment I was having trouble believing it was my dad. My dad was supposed to be at work. I can't remember the exact wording, but just that my dad was telling Mr. Conductor that he couldn't have us. We didn't belong to him. My dad said something to the effect of just leave us alone that he can't have us. My dad then started chant singing as he then walked away us backwards down the stairs. My dad then put Gabby and I in the spare bedroom downstairs. Not too long after that night, my mom and dad put the door that separated the two halves and bolted it shut. That was the last time we saw Mr. Conductor in his ghost train. Also, just to clarify, we're Native American and this didn't happen on the rez. As for the psycho nanny, she ended up getting away with all of the abuse. Gabby and I were just so terrified of that bitch. Anyway, we tried to let dad know what was happening, but psycho nanny Kathy would always peek her demon twisted fat fucking face around the corner and glare at us. The next night our parents worked. She would then punish us for the attempted tattling. Gabby and I do have brothers as well. I didn't mention them before because neither of them saw Mr. C in his train. There's a lot more paranormal experiences I can write about and I probably will in time. I've been diagnosed with PTSD from the abuse I experienced and what I had to witness. I'm still dealing with the physical trauma to this day. I hope one day that the Four Feathers will all come together to teach love and let us all heal. Great blessings to you all. Be safe out there.

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[Joan / Maddie / Various Storytellers]

When I was about 15 I lived in a neighborhood of townhouses so I had a very limited amount of space to have my room situated. Thus a big ass closet was made into my room. The closet was situated downstairs the darkest place of the entire house. There was a little natural light seeping in as there was only storm windows on that floor. Not a Mitchell mentioned there were no bright lights other than the ones for in my room, so pretty much at night the downstairs was completely pitch black. This detail is necessary to understand the fear that I felt in this story. At this age. I was taking care of my sister's cat Simba on that night. As most nights I had him sleeping on my bed, he would usually lay near my side so I know he was with me in bed because I felt his weight on my blanket. I was up particularly late that night playing Pokemon on DS and that wasn't allowed so I had earbuds in. Needless to say, I was heavily distracted. Simba was laying down by my side as usual and I was just enjoying my game. Since I was so distracted I had barely noticed Simba on my bed, I tended to keep my volume a bit Lower, just so I could hear if my dad woke up. In which case I tucked the DS under my pillow so I have it just low enough to hear the sounds outside of the game. Suddenly, during a gym battle, I heard scratching from outside of my door. I immediately got out of bed because I thought that I had locked Simba out of my room on accident. I opened the door door, but there was nothing. I looked behind me and I then saw Simba laying comfortably on my bed. Naturally, I instantly looked in confusion. Simba's right there. What could that scratching be? I looked upstairs as my dad's room is situated right at the top of the stairwell. I saw that his door was closed, meaning he was asleep. No one else was in the the house as my sister got kicked out a while ago before I started taking care of Simba. Needless to say, this scared me a little bit, but I kinda just shrugged it off and shut the door. I kept playing my game, petting Simba in the process. Of course, I just couldn't forget what just happened. I thought about it again and how weird it was that I heard specifically scratching. My dad's clearly at the asleep and it'd be really weird for him to do something like that. Anyways. He would have just opened my door if he heard that I was on the ds. I decided to keep one earbud out. After a bit listening for any sounds, I kept petting Simba until suddenly Simba froze. I did too. The scratching came back. This time, however, it was way more aggressive. It wasn't subtle and quick like before. This time it lasted for like a solid 30 seconds. In my mind, I was just thinking there's literally no sensible explanation for this. It didn't end here though. After this happened, I heard something get knocked over off the TV stand in my living room, which was right outside of my room. I could hear a distinct clang, meaning that the metal bowl holding some display pine cones was then knocked over. This wasn't a super light bull either, so I froze up again. Not just the scratching existed, but it was followed up by this noise. Somehow I mustered up the courage to grab a toy knife by my bedside. I knew this wouldn't do anything, but I wanted something to at least protect me. I opened the door and once again nothing was there. And like I said, the downstairs was terrifying. At night, only the smallest shine of moonlight faded into the room so I could see an outline of the bowl on the ground. I put it back on the TV stand and ran back into my room, shutting the door quietly. Suffice to say, I didn't sleep that night. I'm now 20 years old, and I think back to this story a lot. I still can't think of a rational explanation for everything that happened that night. I'm not much of a believer in the paranormal, but this incident in particular really stuck with me. It's the one thing I'll never be able to explain out of all the ghost experiences I've had.