21 Stories That Will Make You Question Reality
By Ayla Smith,
2 days ago
If you've already watched Latency you know that Sasha Luss's pro gamer character, Hana, starts to experience some seriously disturbing events in her apartment after she starts using a virtual reality device that taps into her thoughts.
She starts to lose her grip on what's real, and so do we.
LionsgateWhat Hana experiences is terrifying, but here's the thing: there are already plenty of stories on the internet of people experiencing events that make them question reality. Here are some of the creepier ones we've found:
1. "A group of us were gathered in a second-floor classroom at church for a meeting. We were having an increasingly difficult time hearing each other because there were loud voices and raucous laughter from the classroom next door. Eventually, a guy from our group left to ask them to quiet down. He returned quickly, announcing that there was nobody next door. In fact, there was nobody in the entire church except for us. But we ALL heard the commotion. To this day, I have no idea who or what that was."
2. "When I was in the ninth grade, I spent the night at one of my best friend's houses. I knew she had a lot of family in the neighborhood, so seeing family in her house was normal. We went to sleep and it was just like any other night. When I woke the next morning, I saw something — or rather, someone — in her closet, which was directly in front of her bed. There was a man looking at me through her hanging clothes. He smiled."
"I figured it was just another one of her family members — perhaps playing a prank — so I just laid down and fell back asleep. We woke up for breakfast and I told her and her dad about the man in the closet. He said no relatives had been over, and definitely not a man. Truthfully, they didn’t seem too concerned about it, but I can still to this day picture that man smiling at me. I didn’t do sleepovers again after that."
3. "My father and I are window cleaners. We were working a vacant home from the 'Roaring 20s' era — giant chandelier, wrap around spiral staircase, checkerboard flooring with fancy carved golden trim. I could write paragraphs on this home. It was big, bold, and beautiful. My father was upstairs cleaning the main bedroom windows and listening to music through a speaker. It was a track from the '70s. I was coming upstairs and the sun outside hit the chandelier, momentarily blinding me. It was like a flash bang, and I was stunned for a second. When I recovered, there was no more music and the whole house felt different. It was almost the same, but it felt like there was one small thing that I couldn't identify that had changed. I asked my dad if he was listening to music, and he told me 'No, but that's a great idea,' and started playing music from his phone. It was the same song I heard when coming up the stairs, but from the beginning."
"Now, my father doesn't remember the house. There is this small part of me that is convinced that when I am on my death bed, I will look out the window and finally see the thing I know is off and realize I am in a different world than the one I was in when I was going up those stairs."
4. "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."
5. "I swear I've been to a parallel universe, or I've woken up in another life. This happened recently. I'm an adult, currently in my late 20s. I was at my parents' house for Christmas, and I hadn't been feeling well for over a week. I had time off work and everything, but by this point, I was on the mend. On Christmas Eve, I got into bed in my childhood room on and started having violent coughing fits that prevented me from sleeping, which was strange because my cough was nearly gone. This went on for about an hour before I had enough time between fits to feel sleepy. Then I closed my eyes and I was somewhere else."
"I was wet and cold, laying on hard ground. A flashlight was being shone into my eyes. I opened them and I was at my parents house — no time had passed. I cannot stress enough that this was not a dream. You wake up from a dream and you realize it was just a dream, but this other world or life was calling me. It was like I was in two places at once.
There were two people — a young boy with brown coiled hair and an older girl with long black hair tied into a ponytail. They stood over me, shining the torch in my face, trying to see if I was conscious or alive. For a few minutes I jumped between what felt like two lives before I sat up in the bed at my parent's house and tried to shake myself out of it.
I keep wondering what happened to the version of me laying on the ground. I keep thinking that I had a choice of which life to stay in, which one to save. If I had kept my eyes shut and accepted the other life, would I still be alive in this one? It's conceivable that I would've choked from coughing. And why was I wet and unconscious on the ground in the other life? Had I been drowning? It would explain the coughing in both lives. It really spooked me, I get goosebumps thinking about it still. I've not slept well since."
6. "My brother was house hunting once, and his girlfriend and I were with him. At one apartment, his girlfriend and I were in the living room while he was in the kitchen with the real estate agent. Suddenly, I imagined blood spraying up across the wall and onto the celling. I shuddered and thought, Damn that was a weird thought. Then, my brother's girlfriend grabbed my arm and said, 'You saw it too right? The blood?' I just nodded at her. She ran into the kitchen and literally dragged my brother out of that place."
7. "A few years ago, I was smoking a cigarette in front of my apartment on the front steps in the middle of the day, around noon or so. I got up to head back, but for a few fleeting seconds while I was looking at the building, it looked totally unfamiliar. I knew I lived there. I knew it was my home. I knew I had just stepped outside only five minutes previously...but my brain was giving me some kind of indication that I had never seen this place before and that there was danger inherent. I violently wagged my head back and forth — like an aggressive 'no' gesture — and was immediately back to normal."
"I’ll never forget that moment. It was like my concept of reality had very momentarily just cracked."
8. "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."
9. "Anyone who wears glasses might know that sometimes you can see reflections at the edge of the lenses from lights behind you. I wear glasses, and in my bedroom when I was young, there were fairy lights that went around the edge of the room and hung down loose in the corner. It didn't happen often, but every once in a while, when I was sitting on my bed, I'd see them swinging slowly behind me in the reflection of my glasses. I'd always turn to look, and they would be perfectly still IRL. I'd turn back again and see them continue to swing in the reflection even when my head was perfectly still. This would happen when there were no windows open, so no draft could be moving them. I study science and have never been a big believer in the paranormal, but I've never been able to explain those experiences to this day."
— Kate, UK
10. "I won a staring contest with a doll. I'm not joking. I was sitting on my bed at 9 p.m., reading a book. I looked up and a doll I had never seen before seemed to be staring at me. I didn't want to look away, so I kept staring. After a while, it slowly, deliberately, blinked. I immediately walked over to it, grabbed it, and slept with it. That probably sounds weird, but I wanted it where I could see it. When I woke up in the morning, the doll was sitting in the same place as it had been that night, staring at me. I have no idea how it got there. I went to McDonalds later that day, threw it in the garbage bin, and thankfully never saw it again."
11. "I’ve had my fair share of weird experiences, but the one that always sticks out the most is my experience with what I call 'the Death Dogs.' It was the summer before my senior year of college, and I was living at home with my parents. For a few weeks, there was this strange, dark, ominous feeling in the house, almost like you were being stalked. Every night, that feeling would get worse and worse. My bathroom was just across the wide hallway from my bedroom. It was maybe six or seven feet from door to door. Not very far, right? It got to the point where I, a 22-year-old adult, would turn off the bathroom light and RUN to my bedroom, slamming and locking the door, riddled with fear at night."
"I vividly remember the worst night of them all. I woke up around 2 a.m. with the worst urge to pee. There was no holding it until morning, which meant there was no escaping going out into the hallway. I turned on my lights, opened my door ever so slowly, peeked down the pitch-black hallway towards my parents' bedroom, and had this strange vision of two monster-like dog creatures turning back to look at me. I ran into the bathroom, peed as fast as I could, and ran back into my room just as quickly. In the brief moment of running back into my room, I had the feeling that the 'dogs' were running down the hallway after me. It was so intense that I felt the need to lock and hold my door shut for several minutes before I felt safe enough to let go and go back to bed.
That next day, my Dad passed away unexpectedly from a fatal heart attack. That night, I woke up again with the urge to pee. Half asleep, I walked to the bathroom and back without a second thought. It wasn’t until I was getting back in bed that I realized I hadn’t even turned on a single light and that the dark, awful feeling was gone.I don’t know if it was the grief that trumped all my other thoughts and emotions or what, but I don’t think it was a coincidence with the timing of the events. This June will mark 14 years since his passing, and that juxtaposition of feeling such dread and fear to absolutely NOTHING still gives me anxiety."
12. "I used to sweat blue for a few months. My clothes, nails, and phone cover all got stained blue. It went away after a while on its own, which was good because the doctors couldn’t figure it out."
13. "My sister once told me that I walked into her room, asking her for help. When she looked over, I was dripping with water. She turned the light on, and I disappeared. She went to my room to make sure I was OK, but found me sound asleep and dry. I remember that night very clearly, because it was the night I dreamt that I was murdered by a man who drowned me in a small lake in the middle of the woods."
14. "I was 11 years old and at an all-girls summer camp. My cabin mates and I were in swim class, hanging out together in inner tubes. I was the only one without a float, so I got out and went to the float shed. The shed was shallow, so I didn't have to look hard for an inner tube. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one. Frustrated, I grabbed the only yellow pool noodle in the cabinet and tossed it in the water. 'Watch my pool noodle!' I called to my friends. They turned around and gave a thumbs-up. 'Bring my sunglasses to me, please!' one of them called. I ran to the pavilion where our belongings were and grabbed my friend's sunglasses. I ran back to the water and tossed them to her. 'Where is my pool noodle?' I asked, noticing it was missing."
"'What pool noodle?' my bunkmate replied. Confused, I ran out of the water back to the float shed. My yellow pool noodle was in the exact same spot I found it before I tossed it in the creek with my friends. I never touched that pool noodle ever again."
15. "My boyfriend and I work together, but rarely leave the house at the same time. However, one morning, we were on the same shift. Now, I like to get up, have a hot drink, and chill for a bit before leaving — whereas my boyfriend gets up and goes immediately. So, this particular morning, I did my usual routine: I got up an hour before him, made my drink, and browsed my phone.
Next thing I know — what seemed like literal seconds later — my boyfriend was downstairs, telling me that we were going to miss the bus if I didn't get up to go. I looked down at my phone again, and an hour had passed. My drink is stone cold. I know I didn't fall asleep, but I lost an hour and have no memory of doing anything."
— kelliem5
16. "I have a memory in black and white. Just one memory. I was about 8 years old at my grandma's house. My aunt and uncle were there with their son, my cousin, about the same age as me. The cousin and I were running around the house and playing — normal stuff. We ran into my grandma's room. All of a sudden, the color went out of everything. The world turned black and white. A chill ran all over my body. It was freezing in there."
"Then the cousin grabbed my arm and BIT ME. I shoved him away, really hard. He flew back onto the bed. I ran out of the room screaming. Everything was so strange. I kept blinking my eyes, and slowly the color came back to the world. I always think about this and wonder what the hell happened , and if anyone else ever experienced anything like this."
17. "We live in a small town, and my daughter and I were making a quick trip to get some crickets for her gecko. The store is at the end of the road, about two city blocks from a park. On the way there, the entire length of the park was road construction. It was bad. We sat and sat — there was a traffic director, cones, etc. We got to the pet store, and I waited in the car as she ran in to get the crickets. It took less than five minutes. The only way to get home was through the construction, and we were complaining about how it sucked...but it was gone. Zero sign of there ever having been construction there. She and I are still completely baffled."
18. "When I was about 7 or 8, my cousins and I were home alone because our parents were out buying lunch. We were playing in my room, which was on the second floor. We got bored after playing for a while, so we decided to go down and see if there was anything to do in the living room. When we made it down the stairs, we saw something unforgettable. There were pools of blood everywhere, like the ones you would see in a crime scene in a movie. There were handprints and footprints on the walls and ceiling. We screamed and ran upstairs. When we heard our parents pull up to the driveway, we quickly ran down to them. I was the first down the stairs; my cousins were behind me. When I made it to the bottom, the blood on the walls and ceiling was gone, and I watched the massive pool of blood that'd been on the floor get smaller and smaller before my eyes, until it was completely gone right before our parents walked in."
"I try not to think much about it now, but it was something out of this world. Honestly, I still get goosebumps when I think about it."
19. "I had a creepy encounter with my high school boyfriend that I will never forget. It happened on an average weekday evening in the fall of 1989. My boyfriend picked me up in his car and drove us to a popular nearby park. We were just talking and listening to music. I was sitting in the passenger seat and had my body turned toward him in the driver’s seat. We were laughing and chatting away when suddenly I saw the look of sheer terror cross his face. He quickly reached over me to lock my car door."
"I looked over my right shoulder, and there was what I can only describe as a human-monkey hybrid. He stood oddly hunched over on all fours, only feet from my door handle. My boyfriend started the car in a panic and sped off as fast as possible. We were in hysterics trying to comprehend what we just saw while also freaking out about how close this 'creature' was to the car. It was definitely making its way toward us. What would've ensued if he had reached us keeps me awake some nights.
I remember going home, calling my older sister on the phone, and crying uncontrollably while describing the human/ape hybrid. It was sparsely covered in black body hair and crouched down on all fours in a very unnatural, awkward stance. He was staring intently, looking 'caught,' like a deer in headlights and unlike any animal we had ever known existed.
Occasionally, my high school boyfriend and I chat on social media about the night we witnessed the most terrifying, unexplainable thing ever. We share a horrifying memory that bonds us forever. Even now, neither of us knows what it was, but I'm grateful he saw it before it got any closer. Seeing that has made me more open-minded and apprehensive to what lurks in the darkness."
20. "I was in my bedroom reading a book while my family was in the living room. Suddenly, my eyes blacked out and the bed that I was sitting on started to wobble and shake. I distinctly remember looking up from my book to see black eyes in front of me. I froze. A few minutes later, everything seemed normal. I was frozen in terror."
"A few days later, as I was crossing the street with my family, I had the same experience. I froze and my parents waited for me, not crossing the road. As I was blacking out, I heard a loud bang. Two cars in front of us had crashed...right where we would've been walking. It still freaks me out to think about."
21. And finally, "On my first day of school, I had a sudden feeling that I already knew everyone. That kind of feeling you get when you've been there for a while, but it wasn't déjà vu. It didn't make any sense, as it was the first day of school and I knew that I didn't know any of these other kids. Then the feeling went away as I questioned it and I shrugged it off. During the last week of school, in the same class, I mildly panicked because the feeling happened again, but this time I felt like I didn't know anyone, as if it was the first day again. I think I experienced a time swap."
Now imagine how frequently things like this are going to start happening once technology means we all live in the space between virtual and reality? If you want a dark preview you can watch Latency now , wherever you rent or buy movies. Check out the trailer here:
If you're in the mood for more real life creepy stories, you can read a bunch here .
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