The House That Never Existed, The Ghost That Caught Her Cheating, And 25 Other "Unsolved Mysteries" People Can't Explain
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I asked BuzzFeed Community members to share the "unsolved mysteries" they've experienced in their lives, but have no explanation for. From true crime to paranormal encounters, to glitches in the matrix, here are 27 that sent literal chills down my spine:
1."I once found a ring in a cemetery. It had clearly been dropped and was not on any grave, so I took it, and my mom posted about it on Facebook. Nobody ever claimed it, so I kept it. It wasn't fancy, just a dark metal with a small eye-like pattern. It was always cold to the touch and had no gems. One day, I lost it at school. I was super sad about it, because I'd gotten attached to it and worn it every day. So, I told my mom that I lost it, and she promised to look for it, as she worked at the school as a cleaner. We had not been outside that day, so it had to be inside."
"I got home that day, and guess what was on my bed? The damn ring. Of course I was happy, but in the back of my mind I was confused, because I knew I put it on. My mom came home two hours later, and guess what she found? MY RING. I now had two identical rings. She found it in my classroom near my desk. I still have both rings but refuse to wear them."
2."When I was 5, I was playing in my room while my mom was cooking dinner downstairs. My toys were always on a really high shelf that I couldn't reach alone, so I needed my mom to get them for me. I shouted down to her to get me one of my toys, but she said I had to wait a little until she could come upstairs. I waited like five minutes before I decided to try to get them myself. I was jumping and trying to grab it, but I still couldn't reach. That was, until I started floating."
"This sounds so stupid to write down, but I remember it. I reached the toy and started playing with it. After a few more minutes, my mom came up and saw I had the toy. She asked me how I managed to reach it, and I told her I floated. She didn't believe me, but none of us have any other explanation of how else I could have gotten it."
3."My husband and I lived in student family apartments while he was working on his degree AND working two jobs. I stayed at home with our baby, who had some extra needs. I'd been up all night with the baby, and kissed the hubs goodbye when he left for work around 5:30 a.m. I finally got the baby to sleep around 6 and went to lie down myself, but couldn’t fall asleep. I just laid there with my arm over my forehead, begging for sleep. My husband come home around 6:30. I didn't think much of it — he was a server at a restaurant, so sometimes came home early to study if they were slow and didn’t need him. The front door was always locked, so I heard when he came in and put his keys in the dish. I was awake but lying down, kind of hoping he’d go to his desk and work so I could try to sleep. He walked over to me to check if I was sleeping, then walked back to his desk to work."
"I was able to nap for about 30 minutes before the baby woke up again. I got up, took a quick shower, then got the baby ready for a walk. By that time, my hubs had left again, but I wasn’t sure where he went as he didn’t have class that morning.
I tried to shrug it off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. I texted him while on our walk to see where he went. Nothing. Two hours later, he texted me back saying he'd just gotten off work and was on his way home. I asked why he came home earlier, and he said he'd been at work the whole time, since they were really busy that morning. I called maintenance to see if they entered my apartment, since they were the only other people to have a key, but they didn’t. Then who the hell came into my apartment wearing my husband’s clothes????"
—Anonymous
4."One evening, I was at home, sitting on the couch with my daughter. We were watching TV when, out of nowhere, I felt a tap, tap, tap on my shoulder. My daughter was far enough away that it couldn't have been her. I looked around immediately but saw no one. Sitting a few yards away was my now ex-wife on the computer. As I looked over, I saw her exit her page, clear the cache, then clear the internet history. There are a few reasons to do this, but they're all primarily to hide what you have been doing. It aroused my suspicions enough that I began putting a little more scrutiny into her computer time. Ultimately this led to me uncovering infidelities, and in the end, us getting divorced. To this day, I'm unaware of who, or what, tapped me on the shoulder; nonetheless, I would like to say thank you."
—Anonymous
5."When I was 11, I was in Sunday school at my church, and one of the church ladies was showing us her slides from her visit to the Holy Land. The pictures were really nice — lots of scenery and shots of the famous sites. Then, there was a slide of these people at the Mount of Olives. Everybody gasped and turned to look at me, including the church lady who took these pictures. One of the girls in that slide looked EXACTLY like me...even down to the clothes she was wearing. I was wearing the same exact clothes right then."
"Since this was a fundamental Baptist church, everyone was looking at me in absolute horror. One of the kids mentioned something about a doppelgänger, others were asking me why I didn't tell them I had went over there with the church lady, and the church ladies were looking back and forth between me and the slide as if I was a demon. It was really terrifying. I had to explain that that was not me and that I didn't even know what a doppelgänger was. I tried to use logic and explain that of course there's gonna be strangers who look alike (even though that didn't explain how we were wearing the same clothes). The kids moved on with their lives, but not the church ladies. They were never nice to me again, and not long after that, the leaders of the church found a way to kick me out of it. I guess they never read the part in the Bible about the Lord working in mysterious ways."
Marvel Studios / Disney
6."I experienced a Mandela Effect of sorts with that 'What is love, if not grief persevering?' quote from WandaVision. It's something I've had in my head for at least 20 years. I always thought it was a famous quote, like by a Brontë or whatever. When I started hearing people attributing it to WandaVision, I thought that was crazy ignorant and went deep diving for the who really said it first. Apparently it really was WandaVision. It’s super fucked; I swear to god I read that somewhere back in high school."
7."My maternal grandmother wore three diamond rings, given to her by my grandfather. The night she passed away, my mom packed up her things at the hospital, but couldn't find the rings that night. Frantic, she called the hospice where my grandma had been before the ambulance brought her to the hospital. They stripped her room and even had the laundry service find her linens. Nothing. My mom triple checked her belongings purse, jacket, clothes — and...nothing. The rings were lost. It was a long and terrible day, and my mom went to sleep late in the evening, still frantic over the rings. In the middle of the night, something suddenly woke her up. She shot up, walked to my grandmother's purse, opened it...and the rings were sitting right on top. Completely unmissable. We like to say my grandmother kept them for one more night before giving them back to my grandpa."
8."A few years ago, my dog passed away. Three or four days later, we had a friend come in from out of town to stay with us. He had his 3-year-old son with him who had never been to our house before, never knew we had a dog, etc. We were all sitting at the table eating dinner when the kid looked under the table and very casually said, 'I don't like your ghost dog.' We all froze and were like...what did you say? He repeated, 'I don't like your ghost dog.' He was looking at exactly the spot she normally would have been laying under the table while we were eating dinner. It actually felt really comforting to think that she might still be there with us."
9."In 2015, my husband and I moved into the basement apartment of my parents' house after my mom died. The event I'm about to tell you about happened just a few months ago. My dad and I both have insomnia, so we were up texting around 3 a.m. I was in the living room, and my husband was asleep in bed. I got up to get a drink from the kitchen and look in on my husband. Right then, a fan we had in the bedroom turned on and FLEW off the box we had it on, hit the ceiling, and went all the way into the the living room. It hit the ceiling so violently that it left a dent."
Paramount Pictures
"My husband slept through it (I have no idea how), but my dad felt it through the floor even though his room was halfway across the house above where it hit. It was wild; I can't explain it."
10."One time, my friend and I were walking through Blockbuster (tells you how old this story is) talking about what movie we were going to get. A couple walked by as I was talking, and the man suddenly said my name. Just my name, nothing else at first. I turned, expecting to see someone I knew, but instead we just stared at each other blankly for several seconds before he said, 'I recognized your voice and knew your name...but I have no idea who you are.' We then proceeded to spend the next 20–30 minutes going through every school, neighborhood, work place, boyfriend/girlfriend, friend, and vague acquaintance we could come up with and could never find the connection. As far as we could tell, me and this man had never once encountered each other until that day. My friends continue to joke that this man is my husband in either a parallel universe or in a past life."
11."One of my teachers grew up in a house with a lot of paranormal activity and told stories all the time, but this one spooked me the most. About 15 years after moving away, she and her three siblings went back to visit their childhood home. The house was a little ways out of town, but when they went to the road that led them home, it wasn't there. It looked like it never even existed. They shrugged it off and drove down there anyway, only to find the house gone as well. There wasn't anything to suggest a house had been there at all — no foundation stones, no cement, nothing. Spooked, they went into town (a fairly small town) and asked if something had happened to their house. Everyone looked at them like they were nuts and said, 'There's never been a house down there.' They still have no idea what happened."
12."Growing up in the late '80s, I was a latch key kid and kept losing my house key. My parents had to change the locks at least five times that I can remember. The last time they changed the locks I was around 11, and they told me I’d be grounded if I lost the next house key. My mom put the house key on a long piece of nylon rope necklace that I’d worn every day for months. One day while I was riding the bus home from school it just disappeared in thin air from my neck. I was always fiddling with it, but never took it off. I had my back against the seat, so no one could've taken it off of me. I remember looking around everywhere on the bus for it, and no one had admitted to seeing it."
"When I got home, I asked my next-door neighbor that was around my age to help me break in my house. Apparently a second story window was unlocked, so he used his dad’s ladder to get up to that window and let me in. I left a window unlocked and would crawl through it every school day for the next three or four months, instead of telling my parents I lost another house key and getting in trouble. One Saturday, I woke up to my ceiling fan spinning. This was weird, because it was autumn and no longer hot, so I hadn't turned it on. Then, I noticed something hanging on the ceiling fan knob on my wall. It was my house key, still on the rope, dangling like someone had just put it there.
I confronted my parents about it, and they had no knowledge of how it got there. They had no idea it had even been lost. The whole situation was very weird. I have no idea how my key just vanished to reappear months later. It apparently had a profound effect on me, because in 35 years I have never lost another set of keys."
—Anonymous
13."When I was 13 or so, we were visiting some friends in Missouri. Three of us were hanging out, and my friend's parents left to run some errands. They were gone for an hour or so, and we decided to sit in a large, walk-in closet play with a Ouija board. It started off with normal, silly questions, but then we asked the spirit where they were. They said, 'I am here.' At that point, we heard the floor boards creak outside the closet and could see shadows blocking the light coming into from under the door, like two feet were standing right in front of the door."
Hulu
"After a few minutes, the 'feet' stepped away and were gone. No one else was in the house — my friend's parents came home an hour or two later and swore they hadn't stopped home mid-errands. So, who was at the door?"
—Anonymous
14."When I was about 8 or 9, my family went on holiday to visit my aunt on my mom's side. My birthday passed while we were there, so my aunt took me to a jeweler's and bought me a gold ring with a flower on it and a light green stone in the middle. Well, a few weeks later I was messing about with it and got it stuck between my front teeth (stupid, I know). They had to cut it to get it out, so it was all bent and now sliced in half. I lost it soon after and never really thought anything of it. Fast-forward three years and my gran passed away and was buried in the local cemetery. One day, my aunt (on my dad's side) had mentioned that she found a small, gold children's ring sitting on top of gran's grave, so she sat it on top of her headstone in case someone had dropped it."
"When we went to visit the following week, the ring was still there. She picked it up and handed it to me. It was my ring. It wasn't cut in half like it was supposed to be, but you could see the exact part when I had bent it trying to remove it from my teeth years before. I took it home to my mum, and she was sure she had binned it years prior. I still have it and still have no idea how it got there or why."
—Anonymous
15."When I was about 7, my family relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. We were staying at a hotel while my parents looked for a house in the area. Every night we were there, I had very intense dreams about a girl, but could never remember the details. I just knew that she was bad news and had something to do with Charlotte. Her face was clear; I can still see it in my head. Anyway, I spent the next few weeks trying to dissuade my family from moving to Charlotte in order to avoid the girl. Thankfully, we ended up moving to a small town outside of the city, which was a relief, because that meant that I only had to worry about her if we took a trip into town. A couple of days after moving in, the lady from across the street came to introduce herself. Her daughter was with her, and she was the girl from the dreams. Her name was Charlotte."
—Anonymous
16."A few years ago, my aunt passed away. After the memorial service, my family and I all went to my uncle's (her brother) house for a little gathering. Some snacks were served, including one of those veggie trays with a dip in the middle. A few of us were in the kitchen, and we all witnessed the veggie tray getting opened and then being left alone, all the veggies away from the dip. Everyone went back to the living room, and, when a couple people went back to the kitchen later, a single carrot was suddenly sitting right in the middle of the dip. My aunt who had passed was well known in the family for ALWAYS doing this exact thing with veggie trays anytime we had one."
"Literally nobody had ever left the living room, and everyone was sitting so close together (small room), so it would've been completely impossible for someone to get up and leave the room without being noticed. There was absolutely no way one of us could've have snuck the carrot into the dip."
—Anonymous
17."My adult daughter and I were in the front seats of my car in the parking lot at Sam’s Club in the middle of winter. I took off my gloves and set them beside me while I made sure I had my grocery list. When I went to put my gloves back on, one of the gloves was not there. My daughter and I searched everywhere in the car, checked on the ground under it, checked our purses, everything. The glove was gone. I even checked the lost and found in the store the next time I was there. Nothing."
"A couple months later, I was visiting my sister a few towns over, and she told me she cleaned out the junk drawer in her kitchen and found one of my gloves. It was the glove that I had lost in the car! I looked at that glove like I was seeing a ghost. We still have no idea how my glove traveled all the way from my car to her house."
—Anonymous
18."My husband and I got a rescue cat, who lived both inside and outside of the house. She spent most of her day exploring outside, but we brought her in at night. We were getting ready for bed one night, and I made sure all the windows were closed, both the front and back doors were locked, and that the cat flap on the door locked both ways before I headed upstairs for the night. I know the cat door was locked, because I pushed it a few times to confirm, as I did every night. Anyway, our cat had been in all evening and was on the foot of our bed as usual when we went to sleep. I was woken at 3:45 a.m. to the sound of scratching, and assumed it was her trying to get out of the cat flap. I went downstairs to tell her no and shut the utility room door so she didn't have access to the flap, but she wasn't there."
"I turned on all the lights downstairs and searched, but I couldn't find her anywhere. I pushed on the cat flap, confirming it was still locked. I checked the downstairs and upstairs windows, all shut. I went back upstairs and looked out of our bedroom window to see the other side of the cat flap outside, and there she she was, outside the house, meowing to be let in!
I let her in and spent the next 10 minutes pushing and trying to get my fingers under the cat flap to see if she could have opened it, but it was definitely locked tight and not broken. We have no idea how she got out. My husband didn't get up in the night nor did I, and we definitely saw her at 11 p.m. when we went to sleep. I'm genuinely baffled. She's the only ginger cat in our area and is distinctive in her markings and meow, so it was definitely ours I let in! So confused, definitely either a glitch in the matrix, or our cat has learned to teleport without telling us."
—Anonymous
19."When my sister and I were in primary school, my mum worked late on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. I very vividly remember on Wednesdays we would go to my cousin's house until she was able to pick us up, which my mother confirmed as being true. However, I ALSO remember being picked up by this younger mum who had a child my sister's age whose house we would stay at on Thursdays until mum could pick us up. Me and my sister both vividly remember this, but mum said it never happened. This girl's mum was SO nice, and she also had an older sister who was about 16 at the time, and I remember her being moody. I remember their steep driveway, and how we used to go ride down it with our bums on a skateboard. I told my mom about this, hoping to jolt a memory, but I got nothing. There’s no connection to it being anyone else we could’ve hung out with, either."
—Anonymous
20."Two years ago, I experienced a 'glitch in the matrix.' I went to work for my shift at the local pizzeria, wearing the same silver stacking rings I always wore. Three of them were those midi-rings — two on my ring finger and one on my middle finger. I know for a fact I had them all on when I got to work, because I had just gotten my nails done and someone complimented my nails and rings. While doing dishes at work, I lost the midi-ring for my middle finger. I looked in the sink and in the drain but couldn't find it anywhere. I asked my coworkers to watch for it in case it turned up, but I essentially lost all hope of finding it. The next morning, the missing midi-ring was hanging from the tip of my thumb. It was too small to fit, so it definitely couldn't have ended up there accidentally because it was hardly on my finger to begin with.
"I was absolutely baffled, and returned the ring to the correct finger. Two hours later, I was filling a glass of water at my sink, and I swear, the lost/found ring JUMPED off my finger and straight down my sink drain. It was like the universe realized it'd been returned incorrectly and promptly fixed it."
—Anonymous
21."I had just started dating this guy who had recently bought a charming, 100-year-old house. I stayed over one night and had a bizarre dream, where I needed his help and tried to find him, but couldn't. It was the middle of the night still when I woke up from the dream. I blinked my eyes open, only to see my boyfriend staring back at me. After a few seconds I asked, 'Are you looking at me?' He bizarrely waved his hand in front of my face, then jumped out of bed, threw the lights on, and dashed downstairs."
"He returned several minutes later, and I was totally freaked out. When I asked what that was about, he assured me it was nothing and that he thought he left a downstairs window unlocked. We left it at that and went back to bed.
The next morning, I asked him again what all that had been about. He told me that he had a dream that I needed help and he was searching for me, but couldn't find me. He woke up from the dream and saw me sleeping, but there were glowing red lights around my eyes. Seconds later I woke up, the glowing orbs disappeared, and my memory of the night begins. He said he ran downstairs because he was so freaked out that he panicked.
I didn't sleep at his house for at least a month after that. I did end up marrying him, though, and even 10 years later we can't explain it. Needless to say, we live in a different house now."
—Anonymous
22."One night about four summers ago, I picked up my little sister, her friend, and my cousin from a bowling alley that we frequented. I was driving back home with them and turned into this neighborhood that I knew was a straight line to my house. Somehow, it ended up making us take turn after turn with no exit, and it seemed to never end. We started getting nervous and a little freaked out, because there was no way this was possible. We'd taken this road many times before, and it always took around 10 minutes to get to my house from the bowling alley. We weren't going in circles, because we never saw anything familiar on this road. Finally we saw an exit, and we checked the time on our phones. We had been on this road for two hours. We all were completely silent on the way back to my house. We somehow lost two hours of our day when it had only seemed like minutes had passed."
—Anonymous
23."This happened over 40 years ago. One day I was reading a book, waiting for the cookies I'd been baking to be done and for the kids to come home from school. Suddenly I looked up from the book and saw a 'movie' playing on my kitchen wall. It was lighter in color than the wall and had rounded corners, just like an old projected movie. In it, a woman was rushing past a wall with white-ish stones that were about 7 feet tall and took three of her strides to traverse. She had a gem suspended in the middle of her forehead on a slender chain. Her darkish, ear-length hair stuck out more at the ear than the top, like a triangle. She was clad in a soft one-shouldered blue dress, wore a bracelet on her upper arm, and had brown sandals that curved upward at the toe. She was frightened and in a great hurry, but not quite running. I suddenly had the strongest sense that the woman was me."
Monkeypaw Productions
"'I have to see how my friends are. I have to see if my friends are alright,' was immediately playing in my head, over and over. At that second, I found myself standing across the room with the phone in my hand, intending to call my friends to see if they were okay. I went to dial a number when I realized that I didn't know who in particular I was calling. I spun around to look at the wall, saw the 'movie' was still 'playing' and, in less than a second, it vanished completely. I can't help but feel as though this movie was replaying something out of my very distant past. I will never forget it."
—Anonymous
24."When I was a teenager, my mom and I were driving home from a shopping trip after dark. A few miles away from home, we saw something weird in a wooded area we were driving through. It was three small orbs of light, rotating in a circle. It was odd, but we didn’t think much of it…until we got home and parked the car. In the trees to the right of our car were the same circling orbs of light. They were too close to the ground to be seen from both of the two locations we saw them, so somehow they followed us home. We were thoroughly freaked out, so we ran inside the house and locked the door. Neither of us ever saw them again, or were able to come up with any explanation of what it was. This was before drones were a thing, so to this day we have no idea what it was."
—Anonymous
25."I’ve used the same app to track my sleep almost every single night for about a decade now. It uses the phone’s microphone to pick up on any signs of movement or noise (like my breathing pattern) to track my sleep cycles. After 10 years, I’m very well acquainted with the ins and outs of this app and have never had any issues with it, until one day a few years ago. At 5 a.m., I woke up to a text from my uncle letting me know that my grandpa had passed away and my dad would be calling me soon to give me more information. As I awaited the call and texted my mom the news, I noticed that the orange pulsing status bar that was typically present at the top of my screen when the sleep app was running was not there. I switched over to the app, and sure enough, it wasn’t tracking. I knew I had set it before bed and could distinctly see myself setting it, sitting my phone down on the nightstand, and turning off the light."
"Before I could investigate it, my dad called. He let me know that my grandpa had passed peacefully in his sleep, and followed up with the exact time he had passed away — 2:23 a.m. — which he knew because the nursing home had relayed that to him. After we got off the phone, I went back to investigating what happened with my sleep app, certain I had set it. I went into the logs, and sure enough, there was a log in there for that night. When I opened the log, it appeared that it had randomly stopped tracking my sleep a few hours in. My heart sank when I saw what time it had stopped tracking: 2:23 a.m. My grandma and I like to believe it was him coming to check in on me. The app has never randomly stopped tracking again ever since then."
—Anonymous
26."When I was in university, I rented a townhouse in a brand-new subdivision with three roommates. This house was less than 3 years old when we moved in, and I lived in the basement bedroom for four years. The main floor was the common area (open concept kitchen, dining, living room), and my roommates lived on the upper floor. I was pretty nocturnal in my early 20s, so I woke up one winter evening around 5 p.m. and hopped in the shower. Almost immediately after I got out, the power went out. Being winter in Canada, it was completely pitch black in the house — especially my basement bedroom. I went up to the main floor to light some candles and wait out the power outage. The house was really quiet, so I assumed my roommates were out or in classes. I was a little scared sitting in darkness with only candlelight to see with, all alone. However, after a few minutes, I heard one of my roommates open a door upstairs, walk across the hall, and then close another door."
"I heard their footsteps right above my head, so I realized that they had gone from the upstairs bathroom to their bedroom. I was super relieved to not be by myself at least, so I relaxed as I waited for the power to come back. After another hour it did, and I stayed at the dining room table the whole time.
Well, imagine my surprise when I watched all three of my roommates walk in through the front door together. No one but me had been home all day, and none of them had guests in the house. I was sitting in full view of the front door and the only stairs the entire evening. I checked all over the upstairs rooms for an intruder, but never did figure out what happened. It still freaks me out to think about."
—Anonymous
27."This happened nearly 10 years ago, when I lived in an old, coastal town in the tropics. A girl and her family moved into town about halfway through the school year. I distinctly remember them, because they looked different than the rest of us — pale skin, gray eyes, brown hair — and hence were alienated, too. Being an outcast myself, I tried befriending her. Slowly, she started talking to me. She never talked to anyone else and never talked about her family, except that she was Jewish and had a brother. About a couple months in, she offered to teach me basic Hebrew. I loved learning languages so it was fun for me. She taught me the alphabet and a few phrases like 'hello,' 'thank you,' 'need help,' etc."
"The building they lived in was one of my regular hangout spots, so I thought maybe I should drop in for a visit. As I climbed the stairs, I saw two tall, similar-looking men (they might've been twins) coming out of her apartment. They wore all black and looked really strange and out of place. Terrified, I told my parents, and they let other people in the building know. All of us and a few cops went there to investigate, but no one answered the door. The cops barged in, and the whole apartment was white. The walls, furniture, plates, everything was white, except for one thing — the words 'help me' written in Hebrew, in red ink.
The cops launched a formal investigation on the family and tried to contact the parents. The girl didn't come to school after that day; the apartment remained empty. Then some weeks later, the cops found her dad's workplace — a chemical factory near a swamp. The workers said he hadn't shown up to work for weeks. Later that night, they found him dead in the swamp.
The apartment was sealed and locked; nobody from the outside was allowed at the building anymore. The next day, my dad got a call from his friend who lived in the building, saying he saw the twins again, this time with her mother. The cops were alerted, but they couldn't find them. A few days later, someone found the girl's body. They said she died around the same time as her dad.
To this day, no one knows what happened to them, who the twins where, why they came here, why the girl trusted me and taught me Hebrew, or where they are now. They were never seen again, the building was torn down shortly, and all further news about it was covered up. I still believe that she trusted me to help her get out from whatever twisted thing was going on in her family. I wonder if I had been there just a little earlier, if perhaps she and her dad would still be alive."
—Anonymous
If you enjoyed these stories, you can read more of them here. Do you have one of your own? Have you experienced something paranormal, a glitch in the matrix, or something else just as strange that you can't for the life of you explain? If so, tell us about it in the comments below or via this anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
