"No One Else Believes Me Despite The Footage": People Are Sharing Their "I Didn't Believe In Ghosts Until..." Stories, And I Don't Plan On Sleeping Anytime Soon

When it comes to ghosts or other kinds of paranormal activity, most non-believers can usually come up with explanations on how certain haunted things might have occurred.

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However, sometimes a skeptic will encounter such a spine-chilling incident that it's simply hard not to believe that ghosts are real.

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To find some of the most creepiest ghost stories, Reddit users u/BakedPotatoWithCheez and u/Kangaruan asked other Redditors to share their own real-life paranormal instances. Here are the best ones below.

1."Years ago, my husband and I were trying to see if we could get a modest house by contract for deed. We took my sister along to look at the house. It still had someone's personal items in it as though they had just stepped out — but it was for sale. We walked all through and were hopeful. Suddenly, my sister said, 'Wait, I know whose house this was! This house belonged to that guy my son knew who died in his kitchen! This was Tony's house!' At that precise moment, a cabinet door shot open and whacked her on the backside. Never one to be rattled easily, she looked up and said, 'Okay, Tony, I get it!' We checked; it was indeed his house, the cabinet had been tightly shut, and the floor was stable. I've never seen a cabinet door randomly swing open with a force behind it like that. Not enough to hurt, but fast, as though a hand had whipped it open. You had to be there.

2."My mom and dad passed just five weeks apart of unrelated cancers. We had taken my son with us to my parents’ house to feed their cats. My son was 7 at the time, and he wandered downstairs to explore. At some point, he reappeared upstairs, strangely subdued. At the time, he hadn’t yet learned to lie, nor did he make stuff up. My wife noticed his demeanor and asked, 'What’s up, kid?' He said, 'Pop-pop is outside by the fence. I want to go home now.'"

3."When I was in college, I lived in an apartment complex. Every once in awhile, at around 2 a.m., I would hear breaking glass. It was clear as day. I never found any broken glass anywhere around the apartment. My younger brother would come out and party with us, and once or twice he came busting into my room, thinking someone was breaking in. Finally, one night, my girlfriend stayed over. She would kick and push in her sleep, and at some point, she nudged me, and I woke up. When I looked over at her, she wasn't asleep. She was sitting at the foot of the bed, facing away from me. When I said her name, she stood up and walked out of the room, and then the sound of glass breaking happened. I looked around and realized that she was still laying next to me in bed. That was the only time I saw anything in that place but heard the sounds pretty consistently."

4."When my son was 3, he started having dreams and visions of people coming out of holes and dancing in his room. He said they were trying to tell him something. He also said he would wake up to see faces in the dark, and they were screaming at him. There were many nights when his screaming would wake me up, and I would run into his room. It honestly sounded like he was being attacked. One night in his room, he was telling me about one of his experiences, and I saw a streak of white light move up over his face. Another time, I ran into his room, and he was up on his knees looking around the room. I didn't say anything and just continued to watch him in the dark. This went on for about 15 minutes, and finally, he looked at me and said one word: 'Manya.' It was apparently his name for whatever spirit he was seeing.

5."I was babysitting my niece when she was 2 years old. My sister was renting a very old house that was built in the 1930s. I'm alone in the place with her while my sister is working overnight. It's about 11 p.m., and she's been asleep for a couple hours at this point. I'm watching TV in the living room and see her running down the dark hallway. She stops just before the entryway to the living room, and I jokingly said, 'You better get back to bed, or I'm gonna get you!' I got up to get her back in bed, turned the hallway light on, and I found that her bedroom door was still closed. I open it to find my niece completely passed out in her bed, drooling and everything. It wasn't my niece I saw in the hallway, so I took her to sleep with me that night."

6."At the time when this happened, about eight years ago when I didn't believe in ghosts as much, my family and I were staying at a historic hotel in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I had a few spare moments and decided to explore the hotel because it was absolutely beautiful. I got lost, and I happened to run into someone who looked like they worked for the hotel but weren't a housecleaner or a clerk, so I was unsure of their position or job. I asked for directions back to the lobby since I had to meet my family in a few minutes. The moment I arrived in the lobby and walked past the front desk, a clerk and a security guard were starring at me in shock and pale faces.

7."I was in my room writing in my journal before bed. It was a bit later, and my parents were asleep. Most lights in the house were off except a little desk lamp. All of a sudden, this figure stood in front of me, and I couldn’t breathe. It only lasted maybe five seconds — but as soon as I could move, I ran to the bathroom and locked the door. When I did, I heard footsteps immediately leave my room, and the door gently closed behind. I stayed in that bathroom for an hour at least. It still scares me to to this day."

8."A couple years ago, I was still living with my parents. I was upstairs in my bedroom hanging out in my room and watching TV. I was on the phone with my friend at the time, and I exited my room and went downstairs to have a cigarette. The only other person in my parents' house that day was my dad, who later I found out was asleep in his room on the main level. Anyway, I was gone for about seven minutes, and I walked back upstairs and entered my bedroom. I was still on the phone, and I walked toward my bed and sat down. After 20 seconds or so, I glanced back up to play my TV, and there at the end of my bed was a piece of paper sticking up from the base. I just remember not understanding what I was seeing and never in my life have I so quickly dropped dead silent. I just remember saying, 'Nate…' and he kept saying, 'What, what?' and I could hardly speak. I quickly said I’ll call him back and immediately took out my phone and took a picture.

9."When I was younger, I lived in a small house that was really dark and quiet at night. I always woke up around midnight most nights and would look for something to eat in the kitchen. So one night, as per usual, I woke up and went to grab the first slice of bread from the new bread my mom bought that day. The kitchen is completely dark besides the two small windows that were fogged so no one could look in. There was this small corner around my fridge that was just dark. Like, darker than the rest of the kitchen even when there was light hitting it. However, I was partially asleep, so I didn’t think much of it. So, when I went to grab the slice of bread, something hit me in the face. I went to wipe it off my face, and all I felt I were just these long, long fingers.

10."The earliest memory I have is of an experience with an apparition. Based on what I know, I was no more than 3 years old when I saw it. My parents didn’t believe me and always had some explanation for me. We moved houses, and tiny things would happen here and there, but once again, my parents always chalked it up to an overactive imagination. Fast forward to getting married, moving into an old apartment, and things starting to heat up a little bit. Bins would get flipped over and the contents dumped on the floor. Then, we moved in with my in-laws while my husband went to school. Cue the real events: The house would go through periods of high activity, particularly centered around me. My husband said he would hear me calling him from another room, but I wouldn’t be calling him. He would see me pass by the bottom of the stairs as he was coming down and would follow me all the way around the corner into the far room — only to dead end with the room empty.

11."My childhood home was notoriously haunted. We moved into the house when I was around 6 and my brother was 3. It started slow with him and I seeing weird things at night and constant nightmares. Things would go missing only to return a few day later. We would constantly hear people talking, foot steps, and doors slamming when no one was around. Over the years, though, it started to escalate: One parent was in their bedroom during a party when they heard a child running and the door to their walk-in closet creaked shut. She assumed it was me or my brother and went to open up the door. When she did, some of the T-shirts that were hung close to the floor were swaying. Peeking out from behind them was a little girl she did not know. The little girl vanished before her eyes.

12."This happened when I was 11, visiting a lighthouse in Michigan that was supposedly haunted by a boy. My parents wanted to take a tour with the tour guide, but I wanted to play outside, considering we had been touring various sites in the upper peninsula that day. No one was around, so my parents ended up letting me play outside the lighthouse while they took a quick tour. As I played outside, a really beat-up ball rolled up to my feet. I bent over to pick it up, and as I stood back up, I saw a boy standing next to the edge of the lighthouse looking at me. I assumed the ball was his, so I tossed it over to him, and he wandered away. I didn't think anything about it, but when my parents were done with the tour, they asked what I did. I told them something along the lines of: 'I was just wandering around. Oh, and I helped this kid get his ball back.'

13."We were taking a tour of the battleship Massachusetts in Falls River for my girlfriend's 30th birthday. She wanted to do scary stuff, and I wanted to see museums, so we stayed at the Lizzie Borden House and the next night at the Shanley Hotel. I didn't personally feel any definitive paranormal activity at each location, but there were definitely signs. The one place I actually wanted to go that wasn't meant to have any paranormal activity was the ship. While we were touring the bathroom/cafeteria area, I was snooping around the shower, just curious, when I got tapped on the shoulder. Thinking it was my girlfriend, I turned around, and no one was there.

14."My best friend came to visit me, and this being South Africa, was waiting at the security gate of our house to let him in. He was calling my name, and I was on the toilet. We both hear my dad saying, 'He's on the toilet; he'll be right there.' My blood froze. My father wasn't home. We had no idea what to make of it."

15."I'm from Indonesia where paranormal activities are quite normal here. But then I had this one disturbing experience. One day I went into my uncle's home in Geneva. He loves collecting statues or historical stuff. Then I was asked to take out the trash that day, and I went to the basement where his office/room is at. It's a small room, like 2x3 meters. Then, somehow I saw a statue of a goddess with four or six arms and the aura in that room just suddenly cold.

16."When I was in middle school, I kept my bedroom door open one night. That night, my father was out drinking or something. He didn't come back by the time I went to bed. So when I heard the front door slam shut in the middle of the night, I thought dad's home. Then, I went back to sleep as I heard him walk up the stairs to the living room; however, I never heard him walk up to my parents' bedroom that was in view from my bedroom door. I felt like something was watching me. I woke up slowly to see what I presumed was my father in the doorway. I squinted at him because he plays jokes like this, trying to scare me and my sisters. When I got a good look at the man in the doorway, I couldn't see any features.

17."A close family friend had been in a coma for a few weeks before his death and wasn't allowed visitors (not sure if that was his family's choice or the hospital's policy. I was about 3 at the time), so my parents hadn't been able to visit him before he passed. In our house, we would always leave the hallway light on; it hung near the bottom of the stairs. The morning after he passed, the light was off. My mother spotted it before me. On first glance, she thought the bulb had just blown out, but then, she noticed that it had been removed from the light and placed carefully on the stairs on a higher step than it would have been had it somehow fallen. My mother believes this was his way of saying goodbye before he went."

18."My newlywed husband and I moved into our first home. It was really old and run down; it had good bones but had sat empty for a number of years. We learnt after moving in that the previous owner, an elderly lady named Mary, had been moved into an old folks home due to dementia and then recently died. Someone had left her funeral pamphlet in our letterbox, and her funeral was at the church next to our house. We understand that she had lived there her whole life and never married or had children. The house was opposite a small waterhole. The activity started off mild when we moved in. We could hear footsteps like someone running on timber floorboards at all hours of the night. At first we laughed it off.

19."I have a ghost of a boy who died in the '20s in my room. And he literally steals things from plain sight when you look away and then they’re gone. And the only way to get that object back is to politely ask him for it. It then appears ether somewhere that was already searched multiple times before, or it's placed somewhere it's physically impossible to get to."

Have you ever experienced a paranormal story that officially made you believe in ghosts? Tell us what happened below.