People Are Revealing The Unsettling And Unexplainable Events That Still Keep Them Up At Night

A Reddit user recently asked the AskReddit community, "What's the most mysterious or unexplained event you've ever experienced that still gives you chills?" The thread quickly filled with hair-raising stories that left me speechless. Here's what people shared:

1. "When I was little, I had this paratrooper action figure. One night, I heard rumbling sounds on my desk. It was dark, but I could see the figure standing up and turning its head quickly as if it saw me. I freaked out and hid under my covers. The next day, I couldn't find the action figure anywhere. I even got my parents to help look for it. It was gone for good. People never believe me and make jokes about Toy Story , but it genuinely traumatized me."

— u/RobotMathematician

2. "Many years ago, my parents and I were quietly watching TV in the lounge when an almighty crashing sound came from the kitchen. We fully expected to be running up the road after the yob who'd bricked our kitchen window, but the window was intact, and no heavy pans had slid off the cooker or fallen off shelves or hooks. Everything looked exactly as it should until we opened one particular cupboard containing various piles of plates, etc. In one stack, several plates, all positioned quite randomly in the pile, were found to be smashed to pieces as if they were hit with a hammer. The rest of the plates were completely undamaged."

"My mum sobbed quietly to herself as she explained that the broken plates had all been brought back from her mum's home, my nan's, following her death some years prior. The incident happened on my nan's birthday."

— u/mbcorbin

3. "When I was 16, we lived out in the mountains outside Vancouver, WA. One night, my friends and I decided to walk up to the top of the mountain to look at the view of Portland — a pretty common thing for us on a Friday night. So, as we were walking up this curvy mountain road in the deep forest in the middle of the night (around midnight), I heard the clear, distinct sound of a little girl giggling out in the forest up the slope to our left. I initially ignored it, as nobody else noticed, and I thought maybe it was just an animal I misheard. But it happened again when we turned the next bend, and everybody else heard it. It was closer this time but not accompanied by any rustling or sounds of movement. It was just the sound of a girl giggling in the woods."

"This part of the forest was thick with underbrush, and nothing could reasonably have passed through silently. I had been out in this area during the daytime and remember having to hack a path with my machete. We all dismissed it, but we were a bit weirded out. We rounded the next bend and heard it again — right at the top of the embankment, hardly 10 feet above us. Clear as a bell, with no sound of movement again, and this time, with a tinge of malice in the giggle. Nothing was visible at all. We immediately ran back to the house. I never experienced that again despite many more adventures, and to this day, I have no idea what it was that was apparently stalking us."

— u/alranach

4. "My friend and I loved walking in the old historic area of our city after we got off work at 10:00 p.m. We always started at the cathedral that overlooked the city. This particular night, we stood looking over our city in the front area of the cathedral. It was magical looking at the lights of the city. We walked around the block, where it was darker, to start our walk. Suddenly, this big black dog ran up to us and started walking with us. He was very friendly, and we petted him and marveled at how he walked right next to us like he was our dog. We were walking on the sidewalk and talking when we got to the darkest area of the block, the back of the cathedral. We saw two men attempting to break into the building. They saw us at the same time we saw them. They started to run towards us in a threatening manner."

"All of a sudden, this black dog let out the deepest, most threatening growl I've ever heard, directed at the two burglars. They heard it/saw him, and immediately ran away. We stopped in shock as they ran away. We looked down at the dog, and he was gone. It was like he disappeared. There was no way he could have run away. He just disappeared. Everyone told us he was our guardian angel."

— u/Fun-Recording

5. "A few months ago, I had an EXTREMELY vivid dream/nightmare about a man crawling on the ground next to my bedroom window. In my dream, he was wearing a red thong and pleasuring himself. Odd detail, I know. I woke up crying, and my husband consoled me. This had never happened before in 10 years of marriage. I don't have nightmares. About a month ago, my husband and I were cleaning up that side of the yard. What do we find in the dirt about three feet from the bedroom window? A RED THONG."

— u/morticianmagic

6. "I saw someone peek in my room one night while I was playing video games as a kid. I had my headphones in, and the lights were off, but I did see someone peek out of my periphery. As always, I figured it was my mom checking on me after getting home. I was concentrating and didn't pay too much attention to it. I might've called out, 'Love you, goodnight!' but I don't remember. I went downstairs 10 minutes later for water, and nobody was home."

— u/NomadicShip11

7. "I was out for dinner with my best friend and her boyfriend. Out of nowhere, I had problems with breathing, a fast heartbeat, a cold sweat, and so on, so they brought me to the hospital. The doctors didn't find anything, and after about an hour and a half, the symptoms went away as abruptly as they had started. I didn't think about it anymore until two days later, my uncle found my mother, who had obviously choked to death on her dinner. She lived alone, and we all thought she had a lot of work because she didn't answer the phone for some days. He decided to stop by when she didn't show up to his place for New Year's Eve."

"A coroner had to examine her. He limited the death time to two days prior, somewhere between 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Well, that was the timeframe I went to the hospital with symptoms that were quite similar to the ones she must've had."

— u/Sqr121

8. "When I was around 7, I would have a recurring nightmare. In this nightmare, I would descend the 23 stairs in my childhood home to my basement. When I finally got to the basement landing, the light above me would flicker, flare, and finally go out. I would see an impossibly tall shadow thing with white, hot, glowing eyes and a sort of sideways attempt at a smiling mouth. Each time I had this nightmare, I would wake up in the fetal position on the landing of the basement stairs. The lightbulb was always found burned out. To this day, almost 30 years later, it still unnerves me to think about it. Usually, bringing it up sets off a few days of the same nightmare."

— u/Tswhiting

9. "For a few months, I lived at a friend's house during my last semester of college. I slept in their exposed basement. Their backyard sloped down, so it was level with the basement. There was a heavy sliding glass door with a lock on the door latch and another on the bottom track, with a big heavy curtain that I closed at night for privacy. This door would close and lock itself occasionally, meaning BOTH locks would close. One time, it happened while I was inside the basement with the curtain closed, and my buddy was in the backyard checking to see why his dogs were freaking out. He'd left the door open and had his back to it. I also wasn't looking at the door, but I just heard the whoosh of the door closing and the click-click of both locks engaging. I spun around, but the curtain was closed and perfectly still."

"His brother also told me of a time he was visiting and heard a noise in the basement. He went downstairs and found a lamp on, but nothing more. He checked further down the basement hall, but it was off when he returned to where the lamp was. He tried turning it back on, but it wouldn't. That's when he looked down and saw that it wasn't plugged into any wall outlet. He ran up the stairs, got in his car, and went to his mom's house instead. He never set foot in his brother's basement again."

— u/Expensive-Vast-2123

10. "In college, my friend and I were going to get dinner (my friend was driving, and I was in the passenger seat). The light turned green, we started turning, and I looked in the backseat and saw my great-grandmother (I called her Mama, and I was fairly close to her), who passed away three years earlier. I was so freaked out. I looked back in front of us and saw a car run the red light, and to this day, I have no idea how that car did not hit us. We should have been T-boned that night. It was surreal. I turned back around and saw that Mama was gone. I swear she saved us that night. We turned right back around and went to our apartment."

— u/jess-kaa

11. "You know how you can identify people you've lived with for years by their footsteps? Well, my dad had Parkinson's for over 20 years. Parkinson's affects your ability to walk and thus causes a shuffling when trying to initiate movement. Unfortunately, my dad was very stubborn and never listened to how the doctors told him to walk properly. He would try to initiate walking (without any walker), which would start as a rapid shuffle, and then he'd lose his balance and fall on his knees with a bang. He would then get up, start shuffling again, fall on his knees with a thud, and repeat until he finally started walking. As you can imagine, his knees were in terrible condition and were swollen to the size of bowling balls. I heard this series of shuffling and thuds daily for my entire life."

"Well, he unfortunately passed away in 2015 due to complications from surgery. A month after his passing, I was upstairs in my room, browsing my computer. And that's when I heard that same series of shuffling and thuds I had heard so many times before, coming from downstairs. It went on for a couple of seconds and stopped. I was home alone and nearly crapped myself. I went downstairs and saw no one there."

— u/PM_ME_ENORMOUS_TITS

12. "I lost an entire day. I went to bed Friday night and woke up Sunday morning. Nothing had been disturbed, my phone showed no activity, and there was absolutely no evidence that I existed the previous day. I felt absolutely fine, and it hasn't happened again. I've spent 10 years wracking my brain over this, and by this point, I'm just going to chalk it up to aliens."

— u/Conch-Republic

13. "Years ago, my wife and I stayed at a coastal hotel with a beachfront view. We were both on the porch looking out at the ocean very late into the night, maybe sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. Something strange started to move along the beach. It was hard to see at first because it was vague and transparent, but after a minute or two, it became the unmistakable image of two people dancing together. However, the image would disperse like a cloud of blue, luminous, swirling vapor suspended in the air and then coalesce again into the dancing human forms. It did this multiple times as it traveled across the beach. We both saw it and remarked on it while it was happening. It was a clear night; we were both stone-cold and sober."

"We stared in awe at this thing for five minutes before it dispersed without reappearing. To this day, we have no idea if it was purely an optical illusion, actual people paired with some atmospheric effect, or something beyond those explanations."

— u/AbsolutelyNotAPossum

14. "Back in high school, my sister and I were in the kitchen together one day. I planned to make a cake, so I got three eggs from the fridge and placed them on the counter. I turned away from the eggs to talk to my sister. We both heard the distinct sound of the eggs rolling off the counter and splatting on the floor. We whipped our heads around simultaneously, but the eggs were just sitting on the counter. It's the only supernatural thing I've ever experienced. So minor, but so odd."

— u/teach_yo_self

15. "I was sitting at a red light on a two-lane road. I was in the right lane, with a big pickup truck blocking my view of the highway I was waiting to cross. My six-month-old daughter was in the car seat in the backseat. The light turned green, and I heard a distinct female voice say, 'WAIT!' It wasn't the person in the pickup because all windows were closed. The pickup next to me didn't move. Two seconds later, a semi ran the red light at high speed. Had I proceeded through the light, I would have been obliterated. It haunts me to this day, 40+ years later."

— u/No_Change_78

16. "I called out of work and went to the beach on my birthday. My eye caught something shiny out on the water. I watched as it was practically driven to me. A partially inflated mylar balloon washed up pretty much right to my feet. I had to walk 10 feet, maybe. It said 'Happy Birthday.' It was pretty wild. My grandmother had died just two months earlier. It was a pretty strange coincidence."

— u/iskin

17. "I work security. I spent a lot of time controlling gate access, often at night. For those of you not in the know, generally, if you're doing gate access, you're in a small concrete shack with windows everywhere so you can see what's happening around you. One night, I was at a warehouse out in the boonies. All the warehouse workers were gone for the night. I was the only person around for miles. I was kicking back, chilling, and just watching movies. I glanced up, and in the reflection on the glass, I saw someone walking by behind my shack. I spun around and looked outside, but I didn't see anyone. I looked out of all of the windows, then got up and went outside to look around. I pulled up footage, and there was nothing."

"I talked to other guards who had worked the night shift at that site. Everyone had experienced it at one point or another. I kept working at that site for two years, doing a lot of night shifts. That phantom would show up in reflections every now and then at night. It led to our unofficial night shift motto: 'If you see something strange, no, you didn't.'"

— u/HeyTuesdayPigInAPoke

18. "One summer, my friend and I decided to go camping in a remote forest area. On the second night, we both woke up to the sound of footsteps around our tent. We figured it was an animal, but the steps were too heavy and deliberate. Suddenly, there was a loud knock on a tree nearby, like someone hitting it with a stick. We called out, but there was no response. After a few tense minutes, the noises stopped. The next morning, we found human footprints circling our campsite, which led nowhere. We never figured out who or what was out there, and it still gives me the creeps today."

— u/Hot-Goddess25

19. "I achieved a huge professional milestone and I was so happy. That night, I dreamt that all these women came to my door. At the front of the crowd were three of my grandmother's cousins, whom I hadn't really known, but they were all nodding and smiling at me. I looked behind them, and there were rows of women. I know they were all relatives who came to congratulate me. I come from a long line of poverty — mill workers and so forth in the UK. My achievement was huge because it broke centuries of poverty. I always think about that dream when I feel low."

— u/leatclowns

20. "I was really sick and had a team of doctors trying to resolve a serious health issue. It was awful hearing worst-case scenarios to the point my parents didn't go with me because they spent most of the time getting consoled by me. One day, after being offered counseling by a hospital chaplain, which I declined, I felt the warmest feeling come over my entire body. It was not hot or uncomfortable but comforting, like a warm blanket. And I heard a voice in my head saying I would be okay. My urge to cry was so great that I had to hold my chest and close my eyes. It was the most comforting, peaceful thing ever. I ended up with the least 'bad' diagnosis and recovered after a couple of years."

— u/ntntna

21. "Everyone was having dinner on New Year's, including the next-door neighbors, and we were talking about lost loved ones when suddenly there was loud stomping running up the stairs. We all stopped and stared, and the toddlers started crying. My mum made me and my uncle go up to check it out. I didn't see anything but got goosebumps and a horrible sense of dread. None of us can explain it."

— u/McFrodoSwaggins

22. "One evening, my wife and I had just gotten home, and she opened the freezer to get some ice. I bought a completely frozen whole chicken the day before and put it in the freezer. The chicken had several bites taken out of it and several teeth marks on it."

— u/Mynameisinuse

23. "I used to live next door to two parents and their son, who was the same age as me. We got on well, and I was around a lot until I moved away, and we kind of lost contact. Anyway, a few years later, like 10 years later, I dreamt I was sitting in their living room, just me, the son, and the dad. We sat there having a nice chat, and it was a really comfortable and friendly atmosphere. Nothing even happened; we were just catching up and enjoying the moment. When I woke up, I felt really emotional, and I went on Facebook to message the son for a catch-up. The first thing I saw was his Facebook status, saying that his dad passed away that night. I can't explain it; that was the only dream I ever had about that family, and it happened the same night the dad died."

— u/McFrodoSwaggins

24. "I was walking the neighborhood one time when I was a young girl, and I saw my friend who lived on the street I was about to hit in the passenger seat of three completely different cars going the same direction (with no cars ever coming back from that direction) within 10 minutes of each other. She had the scariest look on her face every time."

— u/pumppan0o0

25. "My best friend and business partner died almost eight months after a sudden diagnosis of a brain tumor. He went to hospice, and the day he died, I was at home with my wife. Without warning, the lamp on my night table, which I never turned on, suddenly launched a chunk of glass out of the middle. The windows were closed, the lamp hadn't been turned on in months, it was daytime, and no one touched it. It was George saying goodbye. I didn't believe in anything supernatural before this, but I still can't explain it."

— u/Predapio1

26. "One Christmas, we told our parents that a grandbaby was on the way. As soon as we told them, my father-in-law looked at my mother-in-law, mouth agape, and could only repeatedly point. My MIL had been to her hairdresser, who has a bit of a reputation as a 'see-er.' While there, the hairdresser told my MIL, 'You know, I see angels on your shoulders and flitting about you. I think you're getting a grandbaby for Christmas.' We had told absolutely NO ONE."

— u/OlYeller01

27. "This was in the early 2000s. My roommate and I were watching TV and having wine and snacks. She got up and went to the kitchen to get some more snacks. When she turned around, suddenly I looked around, and we were having a party. There were loads of people, a fancy setup, high tables, and a full bar. I was entertaining the guests and passing out snacks when suddenly everything went back to how it had been before: a regular night with my roommate and I both in sweatpants, having wine and snacks in the living room while watching TV. She looked at me and said, 'Where did everybody go?' We compared notes. We'd seen the same thing."

— u/CanIHaveMyDog

28. "I got a brief phone call from my father a week or so after he died while I was clearing out his house. His landline rang, and there was white noise, over which he said my name, and then the line went dead. It sounded just like his voice. A few days later, my wife was gathering up some jewelry in his bedroom and tried on one of my mother's rings (she had died eight years earlier), and as she slipped it on, the lights flickered twice. They did it again a few minutes later as she tried another piece."

— u/akiralx26

29. And: "A patient said to me: 'Who's that whispering?' It was just the two of us in the hospital room. I said, 'No one is whispering. Why? What are they saying?' She just shrugged and said, 'Does that mean I'm gonna die?' I comforted her and told her we were taking good care of her. But she did die of a cardiac arrest about an hour later. She was very sick. She must have known."

— u/pifor

Have you ever experienced something truly impossible to explain? Does it still give you the creeps to this day? Tell us your story in the comments, or submit it anonymously using this form .

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.