22 Real Life Unexplained Mysteries That People Cannot Wrap Their Heads Around

A couple months ago, I asked BuzzFeeders to share some of the wildest "unsolved mysteries" that've occurred in their lives. Lucky for us, there are plenty more spooky, inexplicable tales where those came from! From glitches in the matrix to ghosts and everything in between, here are 22 of their best, creepiest tales:

1."One morning during my sophomore year of high school, I woke up with a really high fever. My mom told me that I should stay home and rest, but I had a major exam later in the day and begged her to let me go to school. She would not budge, so I conceded and ended up falling asleep on the couch in the living room. Three hours later at almost 10 a.m., I woke up and my fever was completely gone. I told my mom and she agreed to let me go to school. When I finally got to the campus, I walked to the classroom for my next subject. My classmates were already outside the classroom, waiting to be let in. They asked me where I came from, I told them I just got to school. They all looked really confused. They said they saw me in the first class that morning."

"I was shocked. It wasn't until later that day that I got the full story. It turns out, nearly all of my classmates saw 'me' walk into the classroom for first period that morning and sit down — including our teacher. My seat was in the first row, so it would be very hard to miss 'me.' They said 'I' didn't speak and had a very severe look on my face. When class ended and everybody headed to their lockers to prepare for the next class, nobody had noticed that 'I' disappeared. That was around 10 a.m. — just when I was waking up at home. I really wanted to go to school that day. Turns out, 'I' did."

—Anonymous

2."In about 1971 or so, I had a townhouse apartment. I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night but, oddly, did not open my eyes. I FELT someone looking at me and, for some reason, I KNEW that if 'they' knew I was awake, they would kill me. I was terrified, but forced myself to keep my eyes closed. I didn't move and eventually drifted back to sleep. The next morning when I woke, all seemed fine until I went downstairs to find the back door wide open and my cat (who normally slept with me) hiding behind the toilet in the downstairs bathroom. I swear to this day, someone had been in the house looking at me while I slept, and might well have killed me had they known I'd woken up."

—Anonymous

Nickelodeon

3."My mom was a non-believer in anything paranormal or 'odd,' but she used to tell a story all the time about her older sister. After their mother passed away, her older sister started having a dream of their mom coming back, sitting at the foot of her bed and talking to her. Her mom would then say, 'Sweetie, you need to get to the doctor right away! There is something wrong.' My aunt would wake up the next morning, writing it off as a dream. This happened about four or five more times. Towards the end of the year, my aunt had a similar dream, only this time her mom said, 'It's too late sweetie, I'm sorry.'"

"A few months later, my aunt was feeling sick and went to the doctor. She was soon diagnosed with a very progressive cancer. I can't remember the exact name, as I was young at the time. The doctors pretty much said it was the type of cancer that had a nearly 99% survival rate if they'd caught it soon enough, but at this point it was too late. She died a couple months after."

—mgoodwin1017

4."My wife and I have been foster parents for 10 years and over the years have adopted several of the children. One of our adopted daughters who is 5 has been with us since she was 3 months old. Although she has occasionally seen her biological grandparents (birthday, Christmas, and on other occasions), she only met her biological mother once when she was 3."

"One morning around 5 a.m., she came in our room and woke us up, asking lot of questions about her biological mother. Prior to this point, she’d never really asked questions like these about her. We didn’t think anything of it until my wife received a call at five hours later from the biological grandparents letting us know that our daughter's biological mother had died unexpectedly at around 5 a.m. that morning. We all think that the biological mother came in a dream to say goodbye one last time."

—Anonymous

5."The strangest unsolved mystery in my life is the tale of the singing lamp. I’d just gotten my wisdom teeth out and I was spending my days laying in my bedroom feeling miserable. One day, my lamp started playing music. I was pretty drugged up on painkillers, so I figured it was just a dream or hallucination. But then my mom and dad heard it, too."

"This was not a musical lamp — it was a very generic lamp that had been in the house for ages. It was one of a set of two lamps, and it’s partner never played music. We even tried taking them both apart and we couldn’t find anything to explain it. The singing lamp, as it came to be known, played an off-key version of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' but it didn’t do it every time we turned it on. Then, about a month later, it stopped playing music forever.

We never figured out why it did that. Neither of my parents are the type of people to play surreal pranks on their sick and miserable teenage daughter, and there wasn’t anyone else who could have done it. Our best theory is that it was the ghost of my grandpa messing with me. It would be in character for him."

—hailcthulhu

6."For as long as I have known my husband (which is nearly 50 years), he's had deja vu experiences. They are random and last only seconds, but he knows what is going to happen for about 15–30 seconds into the future. The most profound experience happened one Sunday at a bagel shop in our town. We were sitting down with the food and coffee we had just picked up when he said he was experiencing deja vu. He then said, 'See that guy at that table? He is going to get up and ask for more cream. A second gal, putting on an apron will come from the back and direct him to the condiment table. Those girls will finally get up, get in line and order, and giggle at some of the bagel names. A lady in a bright yellow raincoat will come through the front door and get in line behind the girls.' As soon as he said this, it was as if someone said 'action' as everything he had told began to happen, just as he said."

—Anonymous

CBC

7."This happened back in high school. In my country, you get opportunity to travel abroad with the school (partly for fun and partly for educational purposes) during your senior year, so I did. I was sharing a room with two of my friends while my twin brother, both due to gender differences and our own preferences, was on another floor with his friends. One night at about 9 or 10 p.m., he messaged me asking for a phone charger. I went down to bring it to him, and saw some of our other classmates in his room. One even managed to sneak in a bit of alcohol, so they invited me to stay for a bit. 'A bit' meant that I came back to my room at about 2 a.m. and went to bed."

"The next day during breakfast, one of my roommates jokingly asked me if I had hearing problems. It turns out, she woke up in the middle of the night and saw me sitting on my bed, glaring at my phone. I didn't scroll or touch it, I just looked at it. She glanced at her own to see the time and saw that it was 1 a.m., so she asked me why I wasn't asleep. I didn't answer, so she turned around and went back to sleep. To make it even weirder, our other roommate, who is an extremely light sleeper said she remembers being awoken by the conversation, except she claims I responded with, 'I can't sleep.' She fell asleep shortly afterwards and woke up again this time when she heard me sneaking into my bed later that night, since our beds were right next to each other. She just assumed I was finally getting ready for bed. This was about five years ago and we still have no idea what happened."

—Anonymous

8."In the summer of 1978, I was in 8th grade and went to a summer camp with the scouts. All week long I was singing "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp aloud and with glee. I had memorized every line and all my little friends were asking me what I was singing. I could not believe that not a single one of them had heard it before, as it had topped the charts. As it turns out, the song was released Sept 1979, a whole year later."

—Anonymous

If you're curious, here's the song:

9."Years ago I lived in the South in Tornado Alley, which was known for its severe storms. One night we had misty rain with a slight breeze — certainly not a windy storm. I carefully locked my front door and went to bed. An hour later, I awakened to the strong smell of smoke and a strange orange glow. I ran down the hall and stopped, dumbfounded, as I saw my front door, which I had locked securely, opened not just a crack, but allll the way. Wispy smoke was coming in, too. I ran to the garage and looked through the windows. The house next door was fully engulfed in flames, which were shooting out and threatening to ignite my roof as well. I called 911."

"I lived in that house for seven years. Never before or after that event did my front door ever blow open in any of the severe storms we often experienced. I am left with an eternal question: Who or what opened my front door?"

—Anonymous

10."One year, my wife and I wanted to visit some friends in Reno. Our daughter was invited to visit friends in Washington DC at the same time, so I jumped on the computer and ordered tickets from the airlines. I even wrote down the order numbers. The tickets were ordered months in advance, so when we received both ours and our daughter's a week later, I placed them in an envelope in the drawer of my nightstand. A month or so went by, and our friends in Reno wanted to know the time and date of arrival so they could meet us at the airport. We went to the nightstand and, to our surprise, only one ticket was in there — our daughter's. We looked everywhere and couldn't find the other two. Having written down the information, I decided to call the airline and have them reissue the tickets. When I provided them with the name and confirmation number, they said they had no record of me or the confirmation number I gave them."

—Anonymous

A24

11."Close to 10 years ago, my family and I went to PetSmart to adopt a cat as a companion for our other cat, who had anxiety and needed a friend. I remember her as a young tortoiseshell kitten named Tot who had a brother named Tater. When we adopted her, we had her fixed and everything was going well. The two cats got along together and they would sleep with us in bed. Tot liked to curl up near my head each night and I distinctly remember how loud her purring was compared to our boy’s."

"A few months later, for personal reasons, we had to return her to the adoption agency. It was heartbreaking. Years later, however, when I wondered how she was doing and brought her up to my husband and daughter, they looked at me like I had three heads. Neither of them remembered the sweet tortoiseshell kitten named Tot. I couldn’t even find the pictures I had taken of her to prove she existed. It was like I had dreamed for three months about another cat living in our home. To this day, no one but me remembers her."

—Anonymous

12."I wore my favorite fleece balaclava (uniquely colored and personally embroidered) daily during winter, until I lost it. It was very special to me, as it reminded me of a happy time in my life. Fast forward and three years later, I was in the public restroom of my new workplace. I passed the empty sinks on my way to the stalls, not noticing anything unusual. I was the only one in the restroom. It was a cold day and I'd forgotten my hat, so I was thinking of how great it would be to have my missing balaclava. Well, when I came out to wash my hands, my missing balaclava was sitting on top of one of the sinks, like it'd been there the whole time. To this day, I have no idea or explanation as to how it got there."

—Anonymous

13."I've got a glitch in the matrix story. In the community I grew up in, there was this one house that was round, like a dome. It was really cool and on one of the main roads in the area, so we drove past it a lot. I distinctly remember the house being torn down when I was a kid, maybe 12 or 13. I remember a small apartment building being put up in its place. I eventually moved away from the area and didn't think much of it."

"Years later, I brought it up with my mom and she said something along the lines of 'that house never got torn down' and explained that she knew the guy who lived in and that he was definitely still there.

Not long after that conversation, I was back in town and drove down that road and saw the house. I was spooked, because I remember the community uproar when it'd been torn down. A few weeks after I had been in town, my mom told me was she was driving through town down that road and didn't see the house or the small apartment building. There was nothing but grass and trees where the house had been. The grass was high enough that it was clear it'd been there for a while, not just a few weeks. My mom and I are both convinced we've jumped timelines a couple times, and the house is in a different state in each timeline."

—Anonymous

14."My grandmother passed away when I was 3 years old, so I don't remember much about her. My grandfather remarried when I was 9, and he passed away when I was 24. He and my grandmother are buried in a family plot in a small town in southern Kansas. When I was 29, his second wife passed away, and was buried in the same cemetery, but on her family plot. The day of Betty's (his second wife's) funeral, my aunt had about a dozen red roses someone had brought to the chapel. She asked me if I could leave them at the grave before I left town. I went to the gravesite, by myself, and left them on Betty's grave, but kept two of them – one to leave on my grandpa's headstone, and one on my grandma's."

"While at my grandparents headstones, I was feeling emotional, and said a few words. I started talking to my grandma, catching her up on who I was now, and how I wished I could have known her, because my dad always told me I was funny and caring like her. I began to cry a little, and looked over at an empty wheat field as I wiped my eyes. From the wheat field, I saw my cousin Christy walking toward me. She wasn't dressed like she was at the funeral, but was wearing a basic red tank top, cutoff jean shorts, and sandals. I giggled and waved at her, embarrassed a little that I had been talking to myself essentially and crying. She smiled and waved back.

I put my head down and wiped my eyes, but when I looked back up, she was gone. I was very confused by that, so I actually got up and wandered around the entire cemetery. I was there completely alone. I left her a message later asking if she'd had been there, and she said she hadn't.

A little while after that, another cousin posted photos of all of the adult female grandkids, and one of my grandmother on Facebook for International Women's Day. I never realized that my cousin Christy looks almost IDENTICAL to my grandma, especially at the age she was in the photo. I truly believe that my grandma was listening and came to give me a brief and very comforting hello."

—Anonymous

15."Years ago, I was fresh out of college and had just started my first full-time job about 200 miles away from my family. My car was in bad shape in early December and I was worried about whether it would survive the drive to my hometown for Christmas. One night, I dreamed that my grandpa came to visit me. He was in hospice care at the time, but in my dream he looked as healthy and energetic as he had when I was a kid. He had a check for me and told me to use the money to buy a nicer car. It felt so real. All these years later, I can still picture what he looked like sitting on the futon in my apartment, even though he was never really there."

"The following day, my mom called me to tell me that my grandpa had some investments that had recently matured and he had asked her (his power of attorney) that morning to divide the money among his grandchildren as an early Christmas gift and inheritance. I used the money to buy a nicer used car and made it home for Christmas to see my grandpa one last time before he passed away that January."

—Anonymous

16."My childhood home was a split-level type of house. It was in a slope, between two roads, and it has an entrance on each road. Our family, however, used the lower floor more often and the higher floor was for guests. I usually played with other kids who lived on the higher road. One afternoon, I decided to take a quick pee break while playing. I was rushing, because I didn't want to be left out by the other kids. As soon as I entered the house, I smelled candles and flowers. More specifically, I smelled a sampaguita — a jasmine variant in the Philippines that is more commonly used as an offering to Catholic statues and relics. It was very unusual because, at that time, my aunt wasn't very religious so she didn't usually place sampaguitas on the only statue we had."

"It was unusual, but that didn't bother me. I rushed towards the restroom but it was locked, so I decided to go to the one at the lower floor. As soon as I approached the stairs, it was very foggy and felt like like someone lit a ton of candles. But what scared me the most was that a lady dressed in a black wedding dress with a black veil was walking down the stairs. She was going very slowly, but I didn't wait for her to reach the bottom. I ran all the way outside, not saying anything when I reached the other kids. I waited for my brother to finish his basketball game before I entered the house again — this time with him. The smell was gone. I held my brother's arm while we walked down the stairs. I asked my aunt if she'd had any guests earlier, but no one was in the house except for our family."

—Anonymous

17."On Fridays, I like to have a drink to wind down. Last week, I made myself a margarita. I salted the rim of the glass and used premade margarita drink mix from Costco. I had my drink and after an hour, went to make another one. It was one drink, so I was still pretty coherent. When I turned back to my drink after putting the bottle away, I found a singular lemon seed floating in it. This was a large seed, so there’s no way it could’ve come out of the spout of the margarita bottle. We hadn't even had any fresh limes or lemons in the house for weeks prior to that night. I was using that bottled lemon juice you get in the produce section of grocery stores to help salt the rim. I didn’t have ice in the drink either, so just watching the lemon seed float around was really weird. I couldn’t explain it or how it got there."

—Anonymous

18."One night, my boyfriend and I were in my private dorm room, getting ready to sleep. All the lights were off, my good, thick curtains were pulled over the window, and we said goodnight. It was about 1 a.m.. We were just laying in bed when suddenly, a bright white light filled the whole room for a good second. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, but my boyfriend saw it too! Now here's the mystery: it came from the corner of the room at the foot of the bed, as if someone had stood there and took a flash photo. But there was nothing there that could've lit up that brightly."

"The bedroom light was on the ceiling. It couldn't have come from outside the building through the curtains, but even if it did, the window was in the middle of that wall not in the corner. I even thought my DSLR camera might've taken a photo by itself, but it was on the other side of the room. The only thing in that corner that could've caused it were some electrical sockets, but my boyfriend didn't think it was possible for them to have produced a spark that bright without frying our phones that were charging from them. My 'theory' is that we entered another reality that moment."

—Anonymous

A24

19."After my grandma died in 2017, I found myself alone in their family home. I was about 19 at the time so, I asked, 'Grandma are you here?' Since I didn't get an immediate response, I proceeded to wander around the home into the front bedroom, where I found the bag she always use to carry on her. I thought it would be funny to see what she kept in her wallet, and I was curious to see if she had an I.D. card at 93. However, as I went to open it, I heard this massive bang and crash in the kitchen."

"Basically, the curtain rod had fallen. For it to have fallen the way it had, though, meant that the rod itself would've had to be pushed up and over the handles, which were still attached to the wall. What made this freakier was the fact it had smashed this little porcelain statue underneath of an elderly couple sitting on chair by decapitating the old woman’s head. I called my mum in a panic and she told me to just leave it all and go home, so I did.

The following year (2018), my grandpa died. So, we start packing up their home, getting it ready to be sold. My mom came across the porcelain statute and my auntie told us to keep it because of my prior experience. In that moment, the elderly man slipped off the chair and smashed on the ground, decapitating his head, too. While this could have been a coincidence, it felt like them both getting the final laugh from the other side. It still spooks me to this day."

—Anonymous

20."My dad is the oldest of four brothers. One day, my grandma — who had very bad dementia at the time — looked directly at my dad and asked him, 'Are you the one who's dying?”. Two days later, his brother died unexpectedly of a heart attack. A few years before this, she rightfully predicted me flying across country to surprise my dad for his birthday, too. I was on the phone with him that day while he was at her house and she just kept asking me if I was on my way there yet. I was literally in an Uber on the way to the airport. She had no way of knowing I was going, as only my mom knew and swears she never told her."

—Anonymous

21."I was 10 years old, living in a small town in Portugal near Lisbon. The house was never occupied by anyone but our family and it was not old at the time. I always had a strange feeling living there, especially when all was quiet. It seemed like some restless energy was always lingering in the air. The apartment had three bedrooms, and there for four of us siblings. My parents had a room, my two sisters shared a room, and my brother and I slept in the last room. There was one trundle bed in our room, which meant a second mattress could be pulled out from a drawer under the bed. It was hard to pull it out and I was feeling lazy, so I asked my brother if I could sleep on the top bed with him that night."

"He fell asleep quickly, but I was a little insomniac even back then, so it took me a while to get sleepy. It was around 3 a.m. and I was almost asleep. I was laying face down, and my brother had his back to me. And then it happened. It was a hot night, but I felt two very cold hands on my shoulders, right on my skin.

One of my sisters always had cold hands, so I thought it was her waking me up for something. I didn't hear her come in, though. But a strange feeling came over me, the same one I'd had for years in the home, like I was being watched. Instinctively, I didn't move. My eyes opened wide, my heart started pounding. I only saw the bed, the floor, and the faint light coming below the door. I just laid there, trying to pretend I was sleeping. The icy hands were still on my shoulders. Then, I felt the hands pushing me up.

I forced myself down a little, like I was sleeping. The hands tried to lift me up again, a little more forcefully this time. I didn't budge. I forced myself down again and felt the hands softly retreating. For the next 10 minutes, I laid there, frozen, waiting to see if someone left the room. But the door never opened. I waited, feeling like someone was still there for a few minutes. After a while, it felt safe to look around. Aside from my brother, no one else was there.

I never felt the urge to turn around to see who it was or to flee. I didn't even wake my brother. I just sat there terrified and my instinct told me to stay as quiet as I could. The next day, I asked who came into my room and tried to wake me. I wasn't very surprised when they all told me that no one had. It was the only paranormal experience I had to this day and I am so curious about the subject. I'm also a very skeptical and scientific person, so I always find the physical, mundane explanation, even if it's a rare event. I never found an explanation for what happened to me that night, though."

—Anonymous

22.And finally, "My mom moved into a new house after my parents got divorced. It was the same street she grew up on, so she knew the women who lived in the house before us. She would always tell me how lovely that women was and that her spirit would never hurt us. The house always had weird cold patches and sometimes, when I was in the kitchen, it would feel like someone was right behind me. My mom told me when I got older that when my brothers and I would be at our dads on weekends, she would hear a person walking up and down the long hallway, the sound of lights turning on, and doors blowing open."

"As I grew older and got more independence to be left alone in the house, I had a range of weird experiences happen to me as well. When it got dark, the vibe of the house shifted and with the long hallway it always felt like you had eyes on you, constantly watching. This freaked me out, so the house was always lit up when I was alone.

One night when I was 17, I was cooking myself dinner in the kitchen when I heard the front door open and my mom shoutout that she was home. I ran to look down the hallway to say hello, but she wasn't there. I ran down the hallway to her bedroom near the front door and there was no one there, either. So I called her to see if she was playing a trick on me, and she said she was still at dinner with her friends and told me leave the house.

When I was 18, my mom and stepdad were on hoilday and I got the house to myself again. Everything was going fine. I made myself dinner, had a shower, and went to go to bed. As I was laying there trying to fall asleep, I felt this pressure around my ankle and, suddenly, a pull. I cried, turned all the lights on, and had the worst night's sleep of my life.

In my last year of living in that house at 23, I was awoken by the next door neighbor's gate banging in the wind right next to my bedroom window. I went down the side of my house, climbed the fence, and locked it. As I was getting down I heard a soft, female voice ask me if I was okay. I looked around, and no one was there. My neighbors were asleep and my mom was out of town. So I ran back to my boyfriend who was still fast asleep, pulled the blanket over me, moved as close to him as I humanly could and fell went back to sleep.

Thankfully, I don't live there anymore."

—Anonymous

A24

If you enjoyed these stories, you can read more of them here and 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.