17 People Share Their Personal Encounters With Ghosts

From user noknockers:

"My grandma called us in the middle of the night and said that her brother had just came and visited her. Knocked on her door and when she got up and answered, he waved at her and walked away.

We told her that it was just a dream and everything was ok, and her brother was fine (he was of good health). The next morning we got the call. He had passed away that night around the time she called us, 11:13 pm if I remember correctly."

From user Nihl:

"I never 'saw' a ghost but I did rent a haunted house for a year (unexpectedly). It was an old house built in the very early 1800s. The rent was decent and it was a stone's throw from a bar we always went to. When we moved in there was a couple renting the first floor, we were on the second.

My roommate and I started noticing some strange things going on, some I can probably explain away, some I cannot. A door that would be open for weeks would slam in your face as you went into the next room. A few items would fly off the mantle, not fall gently off the edge, fall a good few feet off the shelf (this only happened a few times). My roommate's computer would fire up and start loading Rainbow Six in the middle of the night, though didn't see any kind of scheduled task that would do this. His clock radio would also go off at random times in the middle of the night and play the radio.

The worst part for me was my roommate worked nights so I was always by myself, each night I would go to bed, lay there and get that feeling that someone was standing right in the doorway looking at me, not an angry feeling, just the sense that someone was definitely there. I would constantly shut my eyes, get such a strong feeling of being watched, open my eyes and look at the doorway and repeat this over and over again.

It seemed to us that things picked up whenever something changed in the house. Shortly after moving in the couple downstairs broke up. Things happened more often while she was moving out. About six months after that the boyfriend's lease was up and he moved out and a new couple moved in and the activity picked up again. My wife (girlfriend at that time) simply would NOT go in the house if I wasn't home, I would often find her sitting on the front steps waiting for me. One night we blew a fuse (yes, old screw in fuses!) and I was home alone so I had to go down and change it. The basement was just a dirt floor and as I'm down there I remember thinking to myself that this is right out of every horror movie ever made!"

From user evilarts:

"My mom lives in this old, 1800s-era house so I'm sure there are lots of drafts, loose boards etc. I was sitting alone upstairs when all of a sudden I hear a loud noise. I go downstairs to the basement and find that the Sam's Club-sized bottle of powdered detergent had been propelled from next to the washing machine into the far wall of the basement. Man that was a mess to clean up."

From user Dslashdx:

"I fell in love (my first time) with a truly amazing girl. We moved in together after dating for two months. I moved in with her because her rent was ridiculously cheap for Santa Barbara. Before I moved in, she told me 'I don't want to freak you out, but, my house is haunted.' Being the rational, scientific guy that I was, I said 'Sure, whatever you say.' I didn't believe one word of it, in fact, when I tell people this story today, I don't expect them to believe it either.

A little background on this house. It was a fairly old shotgun style, with peeling while paint on the outside and forty year old plaster and lath inside. Morning glory vines covered one entire exterior wall and were making their way inside. They grew in through windows and cracks in the walls. One had found its way into a cupboard and wrapped around an old martini glass, lifting it slightly off its base, suspending it in the air.

The lease, in one of her old roommate's name, was five-years expired and the landlord hadn't been there in much longer than that. Someone had built an illegal addition onto the back of the house at some point.

Needless to say, I fell in love with the house immediately.

The story she told, which she told me had been researched at the library by her and others, goes like this: When the Spanish settlers would execute a Native American, they would hang them from a tree and when they were dead, cut the rope, and bury the body where it fell. The Native Americans called the area they did this 'The Place Where the White Oaks Grow,' catchy ain't it?. This was my new backyard. It was illegal to dig down more than six feet. Yep, an 'Indian Burial Ground.'

One day I was sitting on the floor alone in our room, screwing around on my computer. I reached into my pocket and retrieved my pack of smokes, I had barely put it into my mouth when I felt something bounce off my knee. My lighter, which had been sitting three feet away on top of my turntables was now sitting on the floor next to me.

Another time, I was reading on our bed when I heard something underneath the bed. Pretty freaked out, but curious nonetheless, I peered over the edge of the bed and watched an empty wine bottle roll out from underneath, then back, and back out again.

I was standing at my mixer, playing some records when all of a sudden, I felt something grab the back of my shirt and pull it sharply. The front of my shirt was pressed sharply against my Adam's apple for a brief instant and then the tension released. Heart pounding, adrenaline surging like Niagara Falls, I spun around, fists up instinctively, to find nothing. I put my back against the wall and just tried to relax, when it happened again. Just a quick jerk of the hem of my shirt, but this time there was a plaster wall at my back.

A few more things happened, but this post is long enough already. I never felt threatened, but I had my rational and logical mind challenged to a degree that I never though possible. I don't have any explanation for that house or the things that occurred and I don't imagine I ever will."

From a deleted Reddit user:

"I went to sleep in my bed one night a while back, and as I was laying there I heard a dragging sound on the carpet next to the bed, kind of like if you were to drag your foot slowly across a carpet for a few seconds. I thought nothing of it and continued to lay there, then I heard it again, and realized it was very distinct, and definitely not my imagination. So I sat up, unable to see anything in the dark, and thought 'Okay, if that f*cking happens again I'm out of here'. Sure enough. KKSSHHHHHT, right next to me. So I went and slept on the couch and refused to sleep alone in my own bedroom for five months or so. A couple months ago I got over it. Who knows."

From user eyemyth:

"I was at a friend's house when his stepfather was in the hospital. We'd just finished watching this movie about the Holocaust and were talking about it in his living room when this f*cking blood-freezing moan of despair comes from the next room. We both just stare at each other like "What in god's name was that?" ... and both thought perhaps his mom had just gotten news of his stepfather's death. He went to check on her, but it turned out she was sleeping in her daughter's room on the opposite end of the house. There was nobody in that side of the house at all."