"I Don't Know What To Make Of It": People Are Sharing Their Most Bone-Chilling And Unexplainable Encounters
Reddit user u/GifGuyRob posed the question: "What is the weirdest thing you have seen that you really can't explain?" The replies genuinely made my skin crawl. Here are some of the wildest responses:
1."Around 2018, our roommate (at the time) asked my wife and I if we would drive her to the next town over to meet some dude. We were kind of apprehensive due to some of the stuff this guy was saying, but we decided we'd go. She even convinced us to stay and watch a movie with them, so screw it, we started driving. We decided to stop for gas on the way out and grab a drink for the road, but as we were coming around the corner to the gas station, we saw a woman in a white sundress, no shoes, just strolling down the side of the road."
"She was so close to the middle of the road that I swerved to miss her, then hammered on the brakes, got out, and went to check if I had hit her. She was nowhere to be found. No woman, no nothing, and there was nowhere she could have gone to the left or right. I checked under the car; nothing. We were all pretty rattled, but decided we'd keep going. As soon as we pulled into the gas station, the TPMS went off saying the two passenger side tires were flat. Sure enough, both valve stems had sheared off. We got the car towed, went home, and called it a night. A while later, we found out the guy whose house we were supposed to go to got arrested after a search warrant was executed on the property, and they found human remains. I still believe we were saved by the dark-haired woman in the sundress."
2."I was hanging out on the sidewalk in front of a drugstore when some dude walked by, stopped, looked at me, and asked me to think of a card, any card. Then he said, 'You’re picturing the five of clubs!' I was amazed. That’s the card I was thinking of. 'Holy shit, that’s right!' I said. The dude just winked and walked away. That’s the best magic trick I’ve ever seen, and it was some rando on the street who I never saw again. I have no clue how he did it, other than some form of subliminal planting of the image in my mind, but that’s unreliable. It was a card trick that involved no cards at all. That was the most inexplicable thing I’ve ever seen."
3."My grandmother swears I was saved by an angel at the beach when I was a baby. Obviously, I was way too young to remember, but the way the story goes is that we were floating around in the ocean and a wave knocked little 6-month-old me off of a raft and away from my grandma. She claims she panicked and that I was nowhere to be seen, but as she ran to the shore, a freakishly tall old man with wispy gray hair caught her and handed me over. After checking to see if I was okay, she turned to thank him, but he had vanished completely."
4."When I was about 13 or 14 years old, two friends and I found a house in the middle of the woods that just didn't make sense. We were all neighbors, and along all three of our houses was a very large wooded area. It ran a few miles back and became a state forest. We had run around those woods plenty of times and even had areas we'd recognize as we went. This particular day, we followed a ravine that was sometimes a stream, but was dry at the time. That part is important, because we followed that same ravine several times after that and never could find the house again. When I say the house didn't make sense, I mean it."
"It was a white trailer — I'd say a double-wide. There was white underpinning along the bottom. It was a poor country area, so that's not uncommon. But, it was unusually clean. Like, brand new, perfectly white. But, that's still not the weird part. It didn't have doors, or windows, or a driveway. We were in the middle of the woods. The entire walk through the woods was full of bushes, thorns, spiderwebs, bugs, vines, logs — woodsy stuff. But, this was a clearing of flat grass, like someone mowed the area.
We weren't afraid or anything while we were there. There really wasn't anything remarkable about it, and that's honestly what makes it so weird to think about to this day. We just walked around it for a bit, said it was kinda weird, and we went back on our adventure. Eventually, we all just went home. I'm still friends with both of the other kids. We're in our 30s, and I'm even going to a wedding for one of them this weekend. We've talked about it since, and the story still just doesn't add up. My parents still live in that house, and we spent years after that day exploring the woods all the time. Never found it again."
5."When I was 22 and my girlfriend was 18, we were driving on a rainy night after dark and saw a young lady on the side of the road. As we drove past, my girlfriend asked me to stop and see if she needed a ride, so I did. When she climbed in, she was a little old lady. We drove her to her destination and dropped her off. After driving in silence for a bit, my girlfriend looked at me and said, 'Did you see a pretty, young girl when we passed her the first time?' I said yes. I thought she was around 18 and was definitely not a wrinkly old lady. We both saw the woman in both forms."
6."I had lost my college class ring for about two weeks. I always put it in the same jewelry box by my nightstand. It was a habit I had formed, even when drinking. I had called family I visited recently, but they couldn't find it, and I know if I didn't put it in my jewelry box, then it was in an obvious place (like the counter next to the shower or the sink, etc.) One night, my wife and I took my buddy out to eat using my car. Normal night, nothing unusual. The next morning, my class ring was sitting out in the open, plain as day, in the back seat. My friend SHOULD have seen it — it wasn't even obscured — and he didn't even know it was missing! Only my wife and family knew."
"I thought maybe it somehow slipped off my finger while driving and landed back there with no one noticing it. I didn't think about it again until about a month later. This time, my wedding ring went missing. Same situation. I have the same ritual with my wedding ring, so I couldn't fathom where I could've put it and forgotten, as I only put it in one spot. I ordered a replacement, as the ring wasn't expensive.
I got it, and a few weeks passed. Then, one day, as I was getting into my car, my missing ring was sitting in the back seat, PLAIN as day, impossible to miss. My wife and I share a car, and both of us got in and out of it several times a day for work. After my class ring incident, I checked the back seat for my wedding ring, and it wasn't there, yet it appeared there weeks later. To this day, we both have no explanation for how BOTH missing rings that I never misplace managed to wind up there weeks after losing them."
7."I once saw a clipboard fly off of the hook it hung on and land around three feet away. The room was totally still beforehand, no breeze or earthquake or anything. Just hanging up where it always was, then flung across the room for no reason at all. Most boring poltergeist ever."
8."When I was a young man in my 20s, I would go camping by myself often. This particular time, I had set up a tent in a small patch of grass not far from a creek. I was walking to the creek with my pot to fill with water when I heard a strange squealing and went to investigate. I got to a steep bank, and halfway down, tangled in barbwire, was a bear cub hanging by its neck and front leg squealing loudly. At the top of the bank was the mother, and she was in distress calling and grunt/chirping. My eyes met with the mother's, and I was caught off guard. I looked at her and held my arms out, palms out and fingers pointed down. I somehow knew it would be okay to help the cub."
"I walked up to the bear cub and held it by the scruff of its neck with one hand and quickly unwrapped the wire with the other. Then I set the cub on the ground and backed away. When I got far enough away to feel safe, I couldn't see the bears anymore because of the bend in the creek and the bushes. It was nearly dark, and I couldn't move my camp, so I just stayed the night. The next morning, as I was packing up my tent, a bear came from the creekside with a large fish in its mouth. It was about 40 feet from me before I noticed it. It looked at me, dropped the fish, grunted, and turned and walked away."
9."My family was on holiday at a resort in Vietnam. My sister and I took an elevator in the hotel, and it stopped and opened up on the top floor where nothing was built. There were bricks lying about, a wheelbarrow, no fence or wall around the edge of the building, and there was a single small tree growing out of the ground in front of the elevator doors a few feet out. There was also this impenetrable fog that was floating around, obscuring the sight of what would be the rest of the resort below, and it was quite windy. We both agreed it was weird and looked dangerous to be up there. We clearly weren't meant to have access to the top floor since it wasn't fully constructed. We went back down to the ground floor and noticed that it was actually a sunny and clear day."
"We wondered where that fog and wind went, so we decided to go back to the unfinished rooftop level to check again, but when we did, it was perfectly fine and fully built. We couldn't explain it and couldn't find that half-built top floor again afterwards."
10."My middle school best friend lived in a house in the countryside, and one weekend I slept over, and we woke up and made some breakfast. I poured a glass of orange juice, and my friend hopped in the shower. I turned around and poured some cereal, cut some fruit, and after a few minutes, I turned around, and my glass of orange juice was on the floor. Upright, not spilled. The bathroom was past the kitchen, and my friend never left it. So weird, but boring."
11."My friends and I saw some interesting lights in the sky one night on my mom's deck (we live in the DC suburbs). We were scoping it out with binoculars and a cheap telescope I had from when I was a kid. We were yelling at the sky, taunting it to come abduct us, and being idiots, when all of a sudden, a black helicopter flew in our vicinity at what seemed like no more than 50–100 feet above my mom's house. It hovered and shined a few various lights down. It had green and red lights underneath, stayed for about a minute observing us, then took off. I don’t think the initial lights were anything more than satellites, even though they moved erratically enough to catch our attention."
"But, our county has thousands of police officers. They wouldn’t have sent a normal police chopper for some rowdy kids being somewhat loud in their backyard. The suddenness of the helicopter's arrival and how low it got was unbelievable, and it stunned us for hours after. We suspected some kind of 'three letter agency' was coming to document our acknowledgment of whatever we saw in the sky and either scare us or record us. For reference, we live in the NRO/CIA’s backyard. It was a wild experience that left us wondering what the hell had happened."
12."I was living in my last apartment back in the '90s. I walked down the hall, turned to go to the bathroom, and got hit in the back with a penny. Nobody else was in the apartment."
"I had a nickel fall in my lap while I was sitting on the edge of the bed reading a magazine. It just dropped out of nowhere, and I still don't know what happened."
13."I was on a pretty secluded beach one time, and it was boiling hot. I was sitting in the shade when I noticed a weird figure by the water bending down. The figure looked like a person who was covered in very heavy clothing — clothing that would literally kill someone in this weather. I hadn't seen this figure approach from anywhere, and from where I was sitting, I could see all sides of the beach. Anyway, I felt this horrible sense of dread, like something horrible was going to happen to me, but I literally blinked, and it disappeared. Now, I don't believe in ghosts or the paranormal (even though I had some slightly creepy stuff happen in a couple of old places). I don't drink/take any meds — legal or otherwise — but maybe it was the heat that made me momentarily delirious? I have no idea."
14."I saw a friendly looking cat that I didn't recognize coming up to me, like it was looking for attention, in the hallway of my house. Right when it got close, it disappeared. Years later, I got a kitten, which grew into a cat that reminded me of that cat I saw."
15."My sister and I both saw the same (or similar) floating white figure out of the same window of the house six months apart without having discussed it until about eight years after each witnessing it. Our eldest sister claimed to have seen the same thing in front of our house after we both came clean to her. There was about a year-long period where I would hear a phantom calling my name to the front yard, but there was no one out there when I’d look outside."
16."I’ve had a towel fly off a shelf at a hotel I frequented. It happened on two separate occasions. Both times, I was in the middle of a shower, and suddenly, the towel that was sitting perfectly still on a shelf flew out about a foot away. No one else was with me in the room, and both the bathroom and room were locked. Still have no logical explanation for it."
17."When I was probably 11, I was at home with my mom and dad. The way our house was set up, the office opened into the living room from a very wide door, and the kitchen was next to the living room. It was a fairly open concept. I was in the office on my computer, and my dad was on the couch watching TV. We were probably 10 feet apart, at most, and within view of one another. It was around 7 p.m. and almost totally dark out. What we saw, I can only describe as the most intense camera flash you could imagine. Think about how lightning lights up the dark sky so much it looks like daylight for a second. It was that, but indoors."
18."On a super dark road in farmland with corn on both sides, a weird human-shaped thing with wings was crouched in the road, and it did a weird jump, then took off flying above the corn. Everyone in the car screamed like lunatics. We were on the way to a party, and everyone there thought we were messing with them, but we were legitimately terrified. It was big — like the size of an average man. This was over 10 years ago, and we still randomly message each other about it. I just did some googling, and it appears people have reported seeing the same thing I saw in PA and NJ, so I guess maybe we have something unexplainable going on, or at least we did. All the websites I found had this info put out around the same time I saw it years ago."
19."My parents would leave for work an hour before my bus came, so I got an hour to watch cartoons. One morning, I heard the distinct click of the basement door closing (so I assumed someone got in a basement window and thought nobody was home). I screamed out, 'I haven’t seen you! Please don’t hurt me! I’ll leave right now, and I promise I won’t tell anyone!' and ran out the front door with my backpack."
"We lived in a rural area and had a long driveway, but I could hear plates and glasses shattering because the kitchen window was partly open. That was a long wait for my bus. I didn’t tell anyone, and when I got home, nothing was broken or missing. It had never occurred to me to be scared of being home alone in the morning before. That basement door had a very loud click that echoed up the stairs. It’s hard to mistake other sounds for glasses and plates being thrown on the ground."
20."When I was around 5, I was playing with my mom's green plastic watering can in the driveway (open area, nothing else around). I was just swinging it around and tossing it into the air, when I decided to throw it at the gravel driveway. I swung it down, heard the bang as it hit the ground, saw gravel scatter, and then the watering can disappeared. A few days later, my mom asked me where it went, and I replied honestly that I had no clue. Never saw it again."
21."I worked at a pet store. I closed one night, and part of the duties were to close all the lids on the fish tanks (no way for anything to get out). I opened the next morning and found six fish dead on the floor, on their bellies, an inch apart, perfectly in line. That wasn't the only thing weird that happened there..."
22."A few weird, unexplainable things have happened to me, but the one that really sticks out is from when I was living in this small one-bedroom apartment. You know how when you live somewhere for a while, you basically have the place memorized and can walk around in the dark? Well, I had lived in this place for almost five years, and my routine before bed was basically turning lights off in the living room, going into the bathroom to brush my teeth, turning the bathroom light off, and walking across the hall and getting into my bed without turning the light on in my bedroom. I always did this. Well, one night, I walked into my bedroom, and right as I was about to climb into bed, 'SPIDER' popped into my head, as if someone said it to me."
"I thought, 'Hmm, that's weird,' so I turned around and turned on the light, pulled the comforter and sheet back, and there was this big spider in my bed. I got the chills wondering why the word 'SPIDER' popped into my head like that. I didn't have a spider problem in my apartment. I didn't find spiders in my apartment. It was really weird."
23."My mom died of cancer two years ago. I was with her on her deathbed for her final week as she was in and out of consciousness. I had to give her morphine. She stopped talking a couple days before she died, but at some point in the ordeal, she became totally lucid and started talking about our old neighbor who died back in the late '90s. I grew up in somewhat rural Ohio, and the guy who she was talking about was this classic old guy who would drive around to the neighbors in his old Ford tractor, talk loud, drink whiskey, and chew tobacco. She told me he was in the room bothering her. I started recording what she was saying and started asking her questions. This was the last time I talked to her."
"A week later, before the funeral, I was trying to sort some of my files on my computer and get my stuff in order to give a speech. I had the files of recordings from that week, but I somehow deleted them, and somehow also deleted them from the recycle bin! I have no idea how it happened, and I sort of flipped out because it was our last conversation. If you know me, I'm very meticulous and organized with my stuff, and I never lose files or anything really. I'm not really religious, but my mom was. It was like I recorded something I wasn’t supposed to — something from the spirit realm. It was trippy. Even as I write this, it freaks me out. I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience?"
24."This was about 8–10 years ago. I was on my way to work for an early morning shift. To get to work, I had to drive down this long, dark road, and the speed limit was about 80 km. On this road, there is a stretch for about two minutes where there is pure darkness except for your headlights. While driving, I looked up and saw an orb of light directly above my car that was traveling a bit quicker than me. I've never seen anything like it. The light followed me for as long as 30 seconds, then shot to the side into the bushland. I was intrigued and wanted to follow it, but there was no road that led toward it. It slowly disappeared into the trees. I've never told anyone, except for my girlfriend, this story, as I don't know what to make of it."
25."This happened around 10 years ago, right after my grandpa died. I was 10 years old and trying to fall asleep in my room on my back when I heard whispering. I didn’t think anything of it. Maybe it was mum's TV in the next room. But, then it got louder and settled right above me. I was completely lucid and able to move, so it wasn’t sleep paralysis. It was two voices, a female and a male, and I had the sense they were talking AT me. The strangest thing was, I could very clearly make out syllables, but I couldn’t understand what was being said. I knew it wasn’t in a language I couldn’t understand; I just couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was muffled, but so clear at the same time."
"I was horrified, understandably, and after about 10 minutes of just talking, I called out, 'Stop, please!' and it stopped immediately. I never heard anything like it again. I can only attribute it to my pop dying a couple days before this, but that doesn’t explain the female voice at all."
26."From '91 to about '94, I could be in some random part of town, or another city completely, and I could point out a street light, any street light, and say, 'That one is going to go out,’ and boom, the light would go out. 100% of the time I said a light would go out, it went out."
27.Finally: "I was traveling with my family in the middle of nowhere, VA, and we stopped at a chain restaurant to eat. I went to the bathroom, and it was completely empty. I was washing my hands when the door opened. In the mirror was an odd-looking kid with almond-shaped eyes. He looked super young — maybe 5 years old. Nobody was with him. He came in and just stood and stared at me. I think I said something like, 'Do you need help?' and he turned toward the stalls and straight-up disappeared. I didn’t believe my eyes, and actually checked the stalls (all the doors were open), popped my head out the door, and even checked under the sink. Nobody was there. He couldn’t have ran back through the door that fast because 1. it did not open again, and 2. he didn’t go back that way anyway. I always wondered what it was. Ghost? Alien? Some sort of weird brain fart?"
Okayyyy, well I'm definitely not sleeping tonight. Awesome.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
