Early one morning, my mother was driving me and my siblings to high school. It was daylight savings, thus still dark out, so there was barely anyone around. While stopped at a red light, right before the light turned green, I watched as a very bright, very see-through man ran in front of the car. I gasped, but didn’t say anything, until my mother whispered, “Did you see him, too?”
Warner Bros. Animation
It’s important to note that I’m not even kind of a “GHOSTS ARE 100% REAL” person (I don’t pretend to know, ya know?). My sister and brother were ALSO in the car, but they saw nothing, and we couldn’t see anyone else around. It’s been 10+ years, and my mom and I still maintain that we both saw the same exact thing, but are unable to explain this shared weirdness — and I’ve got about 100 other similar stories, this is straight-up just one of them, LOLOLOL.
Why am I sharing this, you ask? Well, this week I felt less alone with my unexplainable stories when redditor u/elibwell asked, “What is the strangest thing that happened to you that you can’t logically explain?” and people came through with equally odd stories!
NBC
So, with all of that in mind, here are just a few of the strangest unexplained stories shared:
1.
This mystery handprint:
“My girlfriend got out of the shower and called me into the bathroom to show me something. There was a very strange, distinct handprint on the mirror. I lived alone and she was the only adult that had been to my house in about two years. We each placed our handprints on the sides of the mystery handprint for reference and neither look anything like the mystery print. I still have no idea how it got there.”
“I was once changing pants in my room before work and I took off my belt. After putting on my other pair of pants, I went to put my belt back on, but the belt was gone. No one else was in the room and I spent a good 10 minutes looking for it. I had simply set it on the floor. It’s been 10 years and I’ve never seen that belt again.”
“So this still baffles me, but when I was a kid, we moved into a new house, and — while the realtor was showing us around — I saw a lady sitting at a white dresser in a pink room. She even waved at me. When I asked my mom who it was, she just brushed me off because she was trying to listen to the realtor. The weirdest part of this was that, once we moved in, we found that there were no rooms painted pink in the house. My family just brushed the whole thing off, despite my being adamant of what I saw.
Anyway, fast-forward a few years, I’m in high school at this point, and we start renovating the house. While stripping the wallpaper in the master bedroom, we found out it was painted pink. This still low-key freaks me out.”
“When I was 12 years old, I went up to Lake Tahoe with my friend and his parents, who had a condo in Incline Village. One day, the two of us are walking to the bowling alley and had to cross a street at a crosswalk. Right after we stepped off the curb, a car came really close to hitting us.
All of a sudden, we’re both up on the curb, like we were lifted a few feet. We both looked at each other strangely:
‘Did you jump?’
‘No, did you?’
‘No.’
We spent the next hour kind of dumbfounded. It didn’t feel like a shove or any use of force. We were in the street, then we weren’t.”
“When I was in elementary school, I used to have the same dream every weekend starting on Saturday (when I would go to sleep) and then waking up in the middle of the night (on Sunday morning) and throwing up. The dream was always a bunch of numbers. Not even anything happening, just a bunch of random, jumbled-up numbers all over the place.
I never understood why that happened. The same dream would happen on the same night every week, and I would throw up every single time. I always think about it and wonder what it meant, or if it was just some weird coincidence.”
“I have a vivid memory of being at the Statue of Liberty as a child, on my dad’s shoulders, seeing the skyline of NYC. I remember the ferry we took, I remember what we ate for lunch that day, etc. I’ve always talked about it, but my family denies I ever went to NYC. I didn’t go for the first time until I was 23, but strangely enough when I went, I remembered everything just how it had been when I was there with my dad.”
“When I was 10 years old, I didn’t want to go to school one day. I faked a stomachache so my grandmother would let me stay home. I’ve always been a bad liar, so my grandmother tried to call my bluff. She told me if I was too sick for school, then she would be scheduling me a doctor’s appointment. Three hours later, I was rushed into emergency surgery.
My fake illness was actually appendicitis, and it was so inflamed that — if I hadn’t come in that day — my appendix would have ruptured, potentially killing me. I felt 100% fine that day. Faking being sick saved my life.”
“This one is strange to me because it was so long ago that I’m convinced I have to be remembering things wrong.
I was a young kid and, at the grocery store, I saw this small toy helicopter that I really wanted for some reason. I, of course, didn’t buy it, but the memory of it was stuck in my head. A few nights later, I had a dream that I was playing with the helicopter, but I realized it was a dream. In the dream, stupid young me thought that, if I put it under my pillow, it would still be there when I woke up.
After that, I woke up and eagerly checked under the pillow. It was right where I left it in the dream. As a kid, I wasn’t surprised to find it there, but years later I still have no clue how the toy helicopter actually got underneath the pillow.”
“When I was in primary school, there was all of these cups in the cafeteria, which were filled with milk every lunch. Red, green, blue — but only one yellow cup. Everyone would fight to get the yellow cup like it was the holy grail, and it had been that way for years.
One night, I had a dream that the cafeteria had gotten more yellow cups in and, low and behold, the next day there were hundreds of yellow cups.”
“My dad owned a small garden shop, so I’d stay behind the checkout after school until the shop closed. That was until I saw a tall man wearing all black (like a trench coat) walking past my dad and smiling at me before going into a staff only area. I jumped up to stop him, even though I was only seven. This back area was filled with new shipments. I turned the corner, but nobody is there. There was nowhere he could’ve gone.
I ask my dad to check the CCTV after closing, but it’s only shown me jumping up and running out of frame. I never felt comfortable there again.”
“I swear my 4-year-old can read my mind or we think on the same wavelength sometimes. I’ve randomly thought of a specific food (like a specific type of ice cream, which we rarely have) and he’ll ask me to get it, or I’ll be thinking about my mom and he’ll ask, ‘Can we go to grandma’s?'”
“I had a sleep paralysis nightmare when I was a kid. I saw a red-eyed dark figure standing in the doorway. It’s always stuck with me, and I’ve called him the boogeyman ever since.
One day, I was browsing Reddit and somebody painted a picture of their ‘sleep paralysis demon.’ It was like the guy had painted my exact dream, and a bunch of other people commented that they had seen the same creature. It always makes me uneasy to think about.”
“I turned to a person who I barely knew and said, ‘My sister is getting engaged right now,’ without having the intent of speaking to them at all. He politely asked me why I said that, and I had to just shake my head and say, ‘I don’t know.’
A few days later I found out that, sure enough, at that exact moment on the far side of the world, my sister had said, ‘Yes’ to Mr. Right. I hadn’t even known she was dating.”
“I used to fence. I was at a tournament once and had just started a bout against a competitor. You win the bout by being the first to 5 points. I score what I believe to be first point, but the official indicates the match is over and I’ve won.
I stood there, confused for a second, but my opponent seems to agree that I’ve won, salutes, approaches for a handshake. I go along with it. I check the scorecard and it says I’ve won 5-2. In total, I lost probably four or five minutes of time. It hasn’t happened to me since (to the best of my knowledge), but it’s been 20 years and I still wonder what happened.”
“When my daughter was little, whenever she would get upset, something in the kitchen would randomly break. It happened way too many times to be coincidental, and the things that broke did so in inexplicable ways.
I clearly remember one instance very early in the morning standing in the kitchen, telling her she couldn’t have cake from the night before. She immediately looked angry and I heard a weird ‘plink’ sound inside the cupboard. I opened it to find the plate on the top of the stack was cracked in several places. No signs of this in later years. She’s 24 now and I often allude to this and remind her boyfriend not to piss her off.”
“Several times a year, I’ll suddenly get a thought that it’s been a long time (usually months) since I last spoke with a particular friend or relative — then I will get a voice call or an email from that person within a few hours. I can’t explain it, but I never tell them about it because I fear losing this strange ability that I have.”
“When I was a kid, I slept with my bedroom door open because my cat liked to cuddle with me. Our hallway was just a round hallway, and I could see the bathroom door and my parent’s bedroom door. I also slept with my lights on, but dimmed.
One night, I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I called out for my mom, and I saw her standing near my doorway, kind of turned away from me with her hand on her face. I knew it was her because she slept in a big purple t-shirt that night, but she was completely still. Static. Mind you, I was wide awake. When I called out to her, she doesn’t move at all.
Blink. She was gone.
I started freaking out and calling out to her, and that’s when I heard their door open and close and my mom rushed to my aid. I think she either slept with me all night or I stayed up all night watching TV to pacify myself. I started sleeping with my door closed after that and I don’t look too carefully at darkness.”
“I was at a friend’s house and they were in the garage, working on a dirt bike. The driveway was empty and their parent’s had left a while ago. I went inside to grab a soda, but decided to look for his cat, who I hadn’t seen all day. I walked into the office and, as I’m calling the cat’s name, a deep man’s voice said, ‘Meow’ right into my right ear. I jumped and ran around the main floor looking for who said it. I didn’t find anyone.”
“I was too young to remember this myself, but my mom always tells this story:
Apparently, when I was younger (like, barely able to speak), I was sitting on the floor playing with some toys with my mom when I just nonchalantly said, ‘When I was in heaven, I met a woman who said you’d be the perfect mommy for me.’ My mom asked me to describe the woman, and I apparently described my mom’s great grandmother perfectly, down to the eye color. I had (obviously) never met my great-great grandmother, nor seen a picture of her.”
“I had watched an early episode of Criminal Minds where an arsonist would lock people in their homes before lightning the house on fire. For whatever reason, it really got to me. A night later, I woke up out of a dead sleep and couldn’t get that episode out of my mind, so I finally decided to just get up and check the front door. I swear, I couldn’t open the door.
I unlocked it, but it was totally stuck. I woke up my husband because I was so freaked out. He also tried, but couldn’t get the door open, and he’s a big guy! I ended up climbing out a window so I could push the door from the outside while he pulled from the inside. We finally got it open, and I didn’t watch Criminal Minds for a long time after that.”
And finally — this International House of Nightmares:
“I was driving across the US and drove into Salt Lake City. For whatever reason, I got a craving for IHOP, so I punched it into Google Maps and followed the directions to a spot in the middle of town.
I walked in, and the place was empty. I don’t mean, like, there were no customers. I mean there was literally not a person in the place. No wait staff, no customers, no cooks. Nobody. There was partially eaten food on all the tables, and bags and purses in the booths. TVs were on everywhere. There were even burgers on the grill slowly burning. There wasn’t a soul in the place. It was like they all just vanished at once.
I was so freaked out that I hopped in my car and drove until I hit the Nevada border before stopping to eat. I still have no idea what the fuck happened.”
