Speaker 1: What is your life's biggest mystery that will probably go unsolved.
Story one the time I woke up on top of
my refrigerator. I don't remember exactly how old I was,
sometime in my early teens, but it's exactly what I said.
I woke up on top of my refrigerator. I had
been sleeping up there, curled up like a cat, and
to this day I have no idea how I got
up there. There was nobody home at the time who
would or could have put me up there while I
was sleeping, and there's no way I could have climbed
up there unassisted. But there were no chairs or stools
or anything around the fridge I could have used to
climb up, and I obviously couldn't have used one and
put it back while I was still up there. I
also had no prior history of sleepwalking whatsoever, and to
my knowledge, I've never sleepwalked again since. To this day,
I have absolutely no idea what happened, and it still
bugs me. If anybody has any theories as to how
this could have been possible, I would love to hear them.
Story two, Is my dad really my dad? When I
was conceived? My mother and her then boyfriend were having
some serious relationship issues. He had been unfaithful to her
with his ex wife. She went on a road trip
to another state with some girlfriends to clear her head
and blow off steam. While there, she ran into another
guy she knew from back home. He had a nice car,
offered to give her a ride in it, and they
spent the night together. She went back home, and shortly
after she and her boyfriend reconciled and resumed dating. Not
long after that, she found out she was pregnant. The
boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion. I don't think
he knew about the other guy, however, but she refused.
They ended up breaking up some time during her pregnancy.
She was fairly sure that the guy with the car
was the father, but didn't know for sure. The ex
assumed he was the father, but didn't really want to
take on a parental role. I came into the world
and during my second year of life. She wrote a
letter to the guy with the car, using his mother's address,
as she didn't know where he was living at the time.
She told him about me and gave him the choice
of being in my life or not. We were fine
either way. She never got a response. Fast forward thirteen years,
my half sister from my mom's previous marriage was getting married.
The wedding was pretty close to the home of the
guy's mother. I had heard everything my mom could tell
me about him and really wanted to meet him. She
went to the house and formed his mom of my
existence and left our phone number. He called later that
night and we arranged a meeting for the next day.
We lived pretty far apart we met. He was very
friendly and we began to form a relationship. He claimed
he didn't need a paternity test and believed he was
the father. My mom believed it too. He passed away
in a fire about four years later. During the last
two years of his life, we didn't get to see
each other much, but we stayed in contact over the phone.
My mom passed away shortly after due to medical issues.
I haven't heard from her former boyfriend since I was
a toddler, and I don't even know if he's still alive.
Story three. I moved into a new house in July.
After unloading all the things I own, I realized that
I had neglected some basics, like toilet paper in dish detergent.
I went out and stocked up on a few things,
including a giant pack of my favorite toilet paper, the
one with the bears on it, only to realize that
my mom had picked some up for me while I
was out. This giant pack of toilet paper became a
thorn in my side as I moved into a house
that was a complete gut job, and everywhere I turned
I was tripping over boxes and such. There wasn't a
shelf or cupboard big enough to store it, so I
was always throwing it somewhere q the day I actually
need it. Where is this monstrosity nowhere? I searched every
nook and cranny of my house, which had become a
lot more organized over the past couple of weeks. I searched,
I asked friends and family. It's gone. I went shopping
and tried to forget about it. I still look for
that giant pass back of toilet paper. I can't forget.
It haunts me. How does a humongous pack of toilet
paper disappear? And this, I feel, will be the greatest
mystery of my life. Story four. Around two thousand and four,
I was working as a projectionist at a movie theater.
One of the Kids movies had ended, but the last
movie of the night still had about fifty minutes left
of its runtime, so one of the things I would
typically do was check the theater for left behind, loose
change or unopened candy. I went down there and looked
around for maybe ten minutes. I made my way back upstairs,
thinking I still had about forty minutes left in my shift,
and next thing I know, my boss is calling me
on the walkie talkie asking if I'm done and ready
to go home. I thought he was just messing with me,
which he sometimes would do, so I didn't think much
of it until I realized none of the movies were running,
and to my surprise, I had somehow just jumped about
forty five minutes into the future. Even my watch was
showing the later time. I've never been able to explain
it to myself, and at this point, I'm just assuming
my mind made the whole thing up. Or maybe I'm
a one time time traveler who randomly moved ahead about
forty five minutes for no apparent reason. Story five. Back
in two thousand and four, I worked with an incredibly
beautiful girl who, one night, while we were on a
break together, just poured her heart out to me about
how difficult life had become. She was a single mom
trying to make ends meet. Anyway, I got up to
go back to work, but before I left, I offered
her a hug. She stood up and hugged me for
about thirty seconds. It was the tightest hug anyone has
ever given me in my life. A couple of months later,
I found myself moving halfway across the country for a
career change that ended up not working out. About six
months after that, I moved back and got my old
job again. To my delight, she was still there. So
I showed up on my first day back with a
lot of excitement. Come to find out, she had four
days left before she was moving on and to become
a nurse. In some sense, it's almost like she did
to me exactly what I had done to her. Left
for a career opportunity. I'll always wonder if she felt
as strongly for me as I did for her. I
never really got the chance to tell her. Maybe I
should have. Story six. Okay, So I decided to try
a baby gymnastics class with my one year old. She
was having fun, and I decided to grab my phone
to take a few photos. I noticed it wasn't with
my bag, but I didn't panic. I probably left it
in the car. I knew I had it in the
car because I'd been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. I
finished the class and walked to my car, which was
park parallel to the gym. I put the baby in
her seat and called out, hey, Siri, a trick I
often used to find my phone. Siri didn't respond. I
was slightly more concerned, but I still got in the car,
expecting it to connect to my phone via Bluetooth because
it had to be in the car right. I started driving,
but nothing happened. Now I knew for sure that my
phone wasn't in the car. I was already nearby, so
I pulled into my mom's house, she lives two minutes
from the gym, frantically calling my number. To my relief,
a woman answered and said I had left my phone
at the gym. I thanked her profusely and told her
I'd come right back to collect it. She said okay.
I drove back to the gym, walked in, looking a
bit embarrassed. The coach smiled and said, forget something. I laughed,
and said my phone. Then she said, yeah, go walk
around and look for it. I paused, what but I
just called it and a woman said it was found here.
The coach looked just as confused, saying no phone had
been handed in and no one had come in since
I left. She asked the two other moms present if
they knew anything. They didn't. Now I was truly confused.
I borrowed the gym's phone to call my number again.
It rang, but no one answered. I stood at the
desk for five minutes, just trying to process what was happening,
before I asked the coach if I could borrow her
phone to use find my iPhone. She handed it over
and I logged in the compass, spun a few times,
then stopped. My phone was close by, only three streets away,
at another gym. I thank the coach. Drove to that gym,
which I had never entered in my life, and saw
my phone sitting on the counter. I asked the receptionist
who turned it in, but she didn't really know. How
did it get to the other gym, where was it found,
who found it? And why didn't they return it to
the first gym since it must have been lost on
the sidewalk from the car to the original location. I
still don't know how it got to the other gym
or where it was found. I don't think I ever
will story seven. Every Valentine's Day for the last ten
to twelve years, I've been sent a secret Admirer card,
same handwriting, always in all caps, always bearing a postmark
from a London sorting office. To this day, I have
been unable to determine who's sending it. My biggest suspicion
is that it's either my mother or my sister. My
reasoning is that the cards started when I was a teenager,
a socially awkward kid who didn't exact exactly have admirers,
and I just can't believe someone outside my family would
keep this going for so long. I've asked my mom
and sister about it numerous times, but they firmly insist
it's not them. I've asked other family members and they
all deny it too. I've tried getting upset and pleaded
with them, telling them it's starting to bother me and
I'd rather just know the truth. But still the cards arrive. Either.
My family has way more will power and persistence than
I give them credit for, or my mystery admirer is
truly anonymous. Regardless, it continues to bug me. Like crazy
story eight. I once got a random message on my
phone saying four hundred minutes had been added to it.
No idea how considering the only people who could have
done it didn't have that kind of money at the time.
It was a nice surprise. When I was seventeen, I
heard sounds like someone stomping on my roof. I thought
maybe it was the landlord or his son, since we
had recently complained about a leak. I looked everywhere out
there side, but there were no vehicles, no ladders. The
stomping continued for about ten minutes, back and forth, then stopped.
At fifteen. I went to take a nap after staying
up late the night before. My mom came home from work,
banged on my door, and I walked out of my room. Immediately,
I was hit with a massive wave of heat, and
my mom asked what was going on. I was confused
and asked her the same thing. When she came in,
she found the oven open and turned up to Max
and one of the dining chairs placed directly in front
of the bathroom door. The chair had been moved there
once before during the night, when my mom had gotten
up to use the bathroom. I could go on, but
that's probably enough for now. Story nine. A few years ago,
I was driving through East London with some friends, literally
just driving around without any destination. We had been on
the road for about ten minutes when I noticed flashes
coming from the car in front, then more flashes. I
realized they were taking pictures of my car. After a
few shots, they sped off. We kept driving for another
thirty to forty minutes, and while going through a different
area of East London, someone in another car ahead of
us stuck a camera out the window and started taking
more pictures. After a few photos, they sped off too,
this time running multiple red lights. There were a lot
due to roadworks. About twenty minutes later we were near
the first location where the photos were taken. We drove
into a nearby council estate and I realized a car
was following us closely. I took a left turn, so
did they. I turned right and they followed again. I
pulled into a car park, they did too. I pulled out,
they followed. I started to feel uneasy, just about ready
to speed away, when suddenly blue lights came on. The
car following us was an undercover police car. I got
pulled over. Two plane clothes officers approached the vehicle and
asked me to step out. They showed their badges, checked
my license and details, looked through the windows, but didn't
search the car, and eventually let me go. I still
don't know if if those were three unrelated incidents or
two weird encounters followed by a police stop, or if
everything was somehow connected. It didn't sit right with me
that I was photographed in my car miles apart, with
both cars speeding off, and then later pulled over for
the first time in my life. I was a new
driver at the time. Was I being followed? Was my
old car somehow interesting to random people? I don't know
if you'd call it a mystery, but it still feels
like one to me. Story ten. Sometime around two thousand
and eight, two roommates and I saw a giant, winged
reptilian creature flying above our Henderson, Nevada home late one night.
After maybe an hour or so, it flew off into
the darkness. We dubbed it the Mothman. Like the antagonists
from the movie with the same name. The next night,
there were two. They flew in lazy circles over our subdivision,
like hawks searching for mice in a field. One of
them flew low enough that the street lights illuminated it,
and I clearly remember seeing a well de fine quadrceps muscle.
The night after that, the sky was full of them,
along with smaller, barking type things. I can't even begin
to describe what they look like. Then they were gone forever.
For months after, we'd stay up late smoking cigarettes in
the bed of my truck watching the skies. The kicker
to the story is that years later, after I moved
to the Pacific Northwest, my girlfriend and I were hanging
out by the river. We chatted with the family next
to us, and when I mentioned where I used to live,
the guy asked, you ever see any of them flying gargoyles.
My girlfriend, who already knew the story, and I looked
at each other in total shock. Apparently he had a
friend in Arizona who told a similar story. I'm not religious.
I don't buy into outlandish things other people say. I
think kem trails are just vapor condensation. Bigfoot probably a
guy in a costume. I've never claimed to be abducted
by aliens, but I have one giant, unexplainable mystery that
I don't think i'll ever solve. Story eleven. I had
a favorite toy as a kid that I played with
every day, and I always kept it separate from my
other toys so I wouldn't waste time looking for it.
It sat inside this end table looking thing. One day,
I went to grab it and it was gone. I
searched everywhere, and my five or six year old self
interrogated the whole family. No one had any idea where
it had gone. Years later, as a teenager, I found
it underneath a cardboard box in the basement, which had
somehow slipped under the tool bench. I still have no
clue how it got there. Side story, I'm convinced I
have a doppelganger with similar tattoos to mine. In Georgia,
I'm from Indiana. I had to travel there for work
and had never been in that state before, not even
in passing. I stopped at a gas station just outside Atlanta,
and as soon as I walked in, the young cashier
smiled brightly and said, oh my gosh, Hi. Confused, I
smiled and said hi back. She asked how i'd and
then said, I see you finally got your half sleeve finished.
I had just completed it about a month prior. I
was definitely weirded out, but I went along with it.
Then she asked, are you still getting your shoulder covered up?
I do have a tattoo on my shoulder and I
had been planning to get it covered for a few months.
I quickly wrapped up the conversation and left. To this day,
I have absolutely no clue what happened, or maybe it
was just an extremely strange coincidence. Story twelve. It was
nineteen ninety six and I was backpacking solo, taking a
train from Prague to Cheskey Krumlov. We got a bit
outside Prague, stopping now and then at various stations. Then
we stopped in a field. I didn't pay much attention
at first, until a minute or two later, when I
realized everyone was getting off the train with all their
luggage and climbing a hill. I was totally confused. I
looked around and saw that everyone had left my car, actually,
everyone had left all the cars. So I grabbed my
backpack and followed them up the hill, trying desperately to
find someone who spoke English. At the top of the
hill were a bunch of buses with signs in check,
each apparently indicating different destinations, but none of them said
Cheskey Krumloff. I stood there indecisively as buses started filling
up and pulling away. Eventually, a little old lady grabbed
me by the arm and pulled me into one of
the last buses. There were no seats left, though someone
kindly offered one to her, so I stood. We drove.
I had no idea where we were going, why we
were going there, or how long it would take. Still,
I couldn't find anyone who spoke English. After about twenty minutes,
we reached a small station in a rural area and
there was a train waiting. It looked about the same
as the one we'd been on, though I couldn't be
sure it was the same. All the buses pulled in
and everyone got back on the train, so I did two.
Eventually we arrived in Cheske Krumloff, and I got off.
To this day, I have no idea what happened. Was
the track damaged? Was it some kind of emergency, A
herd of cows blocking the line a quiet disaster. They
didn't want to mention. Was it always part of the
plan to switch to buses? I'll never know. Story thirteen
who called me at my new house on my new
landline number from a very old cell phone showing my
dad's name on the caller ID, A year after he
had passed away, and many years after we had lost
that phone in number. I wasn't even in the same
state anymore. I had moved and changed numbers several times,
and only one person, my husband, had our new number.
This happened about seven years ago, and I can't remember
whether I actually answered the call and no one was there,
or if I just stared at the caller ID with
my dad's name until it stopped ringing. I was just
so confused and deeply unsettled. I tried calling the number back,
but never got an answer or voicemail. I contacted every
phone company that might have been a associated with that number,
explained my situation, thinking maybe it was a stolen phone,
but still still, how would they have my new number
and why would they call me? None of the providers
had records of that number or name anymore, and honestly,
I think they thought I was losing it. The only
somewhat logical explanation I have is that an old acquaintance
somehow ended up with the phone and tried to contact
me and had somehow tracked down my new name and number.
Or maybe I imagined the whole thing. I'll never really know.
Story fourteen. My mom and dad were very sick in
their final months. My dad was paraplegic and my mom
was his full time caregiver. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer,
and after about seven months we knew what was ahead.
She was going to pass away. My dad had a
lot of issues, including struggles with alcohol. I sat down
next to him one day and told him he needed
to start taking physical therapy seriously because she was getting
weak and couldn't continue caring for him. He passed away
in his sleep just a few days later. It was peaceful.
My mom found him in the morning with a glass
in his hand. That's how calm it was. He had
an entire pharmacy at his bedside, including vicodin infentanyl. When
the hospital asked if I wanted an autopsy, I declined.
I was twenty three at the time and felt he
had been through enough in those last years. I couldn't
bear the idea of his body being cut open for answers.
My mom, already very sick herself, didn't argue with my decision.
She was honestly overwhelmed with a mix of relief and guilt,
relief that she wouldn't have to take care of him anymore,
guilt for feeling that way, and anxiety about her own health.
She passed just under four months after him. I think
he may have ended his own life by overdosing, but
I'll never know. A lot still haunts me about those
last few months and what I could have done differently,
but I was a mess and far too young to
navigate that situation with a clear head. Story. My girlfriend
and I moved into an apartment about a year ago.
Nothing strange happened for the first month or so. Then
one day her mostly blind dog was staring into the
closet and barking. We thought he was barking at a dress,
so we said, come on, Nelson, it's just a dress
and shut the closet, but he kept staring in that
direction with an intense, almost aggressive focus. A bit later,
something slid off the counter on its own. It was
a little weird, but we didn't overthink it. Then one
day I was walking to the bathroom and saw something
run across the hallway. I asked my girlfriend where Nelson was,
just in case it was him, but she said he
was right next to her. Another day, while I was
at work, my girlfriend said she saw something that looked
like a shadowy catlike figure. We know it wasn't an
actual cat or any animal because I'm severely allergic. We've
just come to accept that maybe the place is haunted
by a ghost cat Story sixteen. A few years after
I moved out of my parents' house, though I still
visited weekly, they kept calling me one week to tell
me they saved a piece of coconut custard pie for me.
They were making a really big deal about it, which
felt odd. When I got there that Friday, they were
still going on and on about the pie. When it
came time to eat it, I noticed there was only
one piece missing, not one piece saved. Strange, but I
didn't dwell on it. They both watched me closely as
I took a bite. It tasted terrible, like chemicals or
cleaning solution. I spit it out and told them something
was off. They tried to get me to eat more,
saying maybe I could figure out what went wrong with it.
I refused. They started acting very strange, so I asked
what was going on. My mom acted confused and upset,
saying there was nothing wrong, it was just pie. Then
my dad casually got in his car and left. I
pressed them about it many times afterward, but never got
a real answer. When I really pushed, my mom would
get emotional and accuse me of being paranoid or strange
for thinking something was off. I spent years with them
after that, never learning what actually happened. Now they're both gone,
and I still have no answers. Story seventeen. When I
was around ten years old, my dad and I were
walking down some train tracks in West Virginia. Out of nowhere,
a young man appeared from the woods, probably in his
early twenties. He was shirtless and had strange markings on
his chest and face. It looked like he had used
berry juice to paint on himself. He came over and
started talking to us. I don't remember everything he said
since I was just a kid, but what I do
remember has stayed with me. The tracks we were walking,
followed a winding path through the woods, and eventually crossed
a huge river via a narrow bridge. The bridge had
no room to walk beside the tracks, just wide enough
for the train. He told us that he walked across
that bridge all the time, and claimed a train had
never come while he was crossing. He said a few
more things and then went on his way. A few
minutes later, we saw him reach the bridge and start crossing.
When he was about a quarter of the way across,
we heard a train coming from our direction. It passed us,
going fairly quickly and blocked our view of the bridge.
Then we noticed the trains slowing down and eventually coming
to a complete stop. It couldn't stop fast enough, though
The first car was about three quarters of the way
across the bridge by the time it halted. We ran
to the edge of the cliff to see what had happened.
We looked at the land on the other side and
down into the river below, but there was no sign
of the guy. The train sat there for a few
minutes and then started back up and left. We never
found out what happened to him, and I think about
it all the time. Story eighteen. I went to stay
at a castle with my husband and his family members.
I don't believe in ghosts, but they do, so they
were planning to play ghost hunters. I just wanted the
experience of staying in a castle. We were allowed to
wander around at night after a guided ghost tour. The
room we went to allegedly had two main spirits, a
boy in blue and a gray lady, the usual kind
of legends. The rest of the group sat in the
living room while I sat apart at a little folding
table in the kitchen area. It was open plan. They
didn't want my skeptical presence ruining the energy. While they
tried to communicate. They started asking things like is anyone there,
but weren't getting any responses. Suddenly I felt the energy
drained from my body. I couldn't even hold my head
up and had to rest it on the table. Then
I started feeling these strange electric like sensations touching me.
I told them what I was experiencing and that I
felt something touching my head. They turned the camera toward me,
and on the footage they could see a bluish orb
flying out of my head. I said, I could feel
something touching my back and sure enough, the ORB then
appeared to exit from my back. That continued for about
five minutes, me describing where I felt something, followed by
the ORB appearing to come in or out of that
exact spot. Then just as quickly as it started, it stopped.
I felt completely normal again. That's my life's mystery. I
don't belie even the supernatural. I believe there's probably a
scientific explanation for what happened. There's still a lot we
don't understand. I don't think it was a lens flare.
It was a pitch black room with the curtains closed.
I checked for reflective surfaces, and there was nothing blue
in the area. If it were just dust catching the
infrared light from the night vision camera, it would be
an incredible coincidence for it to match the exact spots
I was naming repeatedly. I don't think it was psychological either.
I don't believe in that kind of stuff, and I
was honestly trying to suppress laughter at how ridiculous it
all seemed. I didn't convince myself into feeling or seeing anything,
but that night still bugs me, and I think it
always will. Story nineteen. I can't remember exactly how old
I was, but I couldn't have been older than ten.
I was living in a small military town in Idaho.
One night, around ten pm, the power went out in
the neighborhood. I've always loved the stars, and my dad
mentioned that with no lights around, I should go check
out how the sky looked. It would be super bright.
I went outside and spend some time just enjoying the view.
Then I got the idea to climb up onto the
roof over our patio. My dad kept a ladder leaning
against the shed right next to the roof for that reason.
I was about halfway up the ladder when I noticed
something unusual. It took me a second to recognize it.
It was the complete absence of sound. No bugs, chirping,
no wind blowing, just silence. I looked up and saw
something massive fly overhead, completely silent. It was dark, but
I could just barely make out a huge shape behind it.
It completely blotted out the stars. I had grown up
near an air force base and was used to the
sounds of jets flying overhead. This thing couldn't have been
a jet. There was absolutely no noise. The silence was
so intense I was frozen in place. I ran inside
and told my dad what I saw. He didn't have
any explanation, and even now, after serving in the Air
Force for ten years, I still don't have a good
theory for what it could have been. It scared me then,
and the mystery of it still sticks with me. Story twenty.
I was on a family trip to Yosemite when I
was somewhere between twelve and fourteen years old. I can't
remember exactly. It was me, my parents, and my godparents
one night walking home from dinner. We were on a
path that had dark woods on one side and a
part of town on the other. Through this particular stretch,
there were no buildings on the left, just pitch black
forest on the right. My parents started walking ahead of
me and my godparents maybe about seventy five feet ahead,
while I stayed back talking with my godparents. Between us
and my parents there was an older lady walking alone
keeping pace. I was being a brat intentionally to my godparents,
and they laughed and told me to go bother my
parents instead, so I happily ran and skipped ahead. As
I passed the older lady, she suddenly grabbed my shoulder
and dug her nails into me. She said something along
the lines of better be nice to your grandparents. I'll
never forget the sound of her bracelets. She was wearing,
maybe seven to ten of them, clanging together. The entire
encounter lasted maybe ten seconds. She grabbed me, whispered to me,
and then I screamed and ran to my parents crying.
They asked what happened, and I explained everything. I went
to point back at the lady, but she was gone.
She couldn't have passed my parents, and she couldn't have
walked into town or we'd have seen her. That meant
she must have gone into the woods. My parents didn't
believe me until we got back to the hotel. They
looked at my shoulder and it was red with clear
nail imprints and faint marks from bracelets. I'll never know
who she was or why she walked into the dark
woods that night. Story twenty one. I have two decent ones.
One night, I came home after drinking and went straight
to sleep. The next morning I had a missed call
and voicemail from an unknown number. The message was someone
saying my name over and over again in a soft,
almost voice. It sounded like a woman or a man
trying to sound like one. The strange part, I had
just moved to the countryside and had only given my
number to two people, my wife, who was asleep next
to me at the time, and my best friend, who
had crashed on our couch that night because he couldn't
drive home. The second story happened in college. A few
friends and I took a spontaneous spring break trip to
Colorado to go skiing. None of our family or friends
knew exactly where we were. We just drove to Durango,
hopped online at the local library, and started calling around
to find a cabin. We eventually found a place with
just a few cabins, all empty except for the one
where the owner lived. On the first or second night,
there was a knock at the door. It was the
owner telling us we had a phone call on the
main line at her cabin. One of my friends went
with her, but by the time they got there, the
caller had hung up. The owner said the person on
the line had asked to speak to the guys from
Oklahoma who were staying there. All our cars had oak
lea home of plates, but no one outside the group
knew where we were. The owner didn't have any more information.
We were thoroughly creeped out, especially me, since I had
to sleep in the living room, which had big windows
with no curtains, while the others were in bedrooms. I'll
never know who made that call or how they knew
where we were. Story twenty two. When I was around
four or five years old, I became obsessed with the
idea of flying. I thought that if I just focused
hard enough, I could lift off the ground. I practiced
this for weeks until one day I actually started to
float up to the upper part of a door frame
and then slowly backed down. I was incredibly excited and
ran to tell my mom. She didn't believe me at first,
just said, yeah, sure, But the thing is, she remembers
that day. It never worked again after that, not even
later the same day. Another strange thing happened. Around that
same time. I got a floating balloon from a theme
park and brought it home. I was alone with my
parents out feeling bored. The balloon had I lost just
enough gas to hover with its string touching the floor.
At one point I decided to play hide and seek
with it, and somehow it worked. I would hide in
another room behind a sofa, and the balloon would float
over to where I was and find me no open windows.
It happened more than once. For some reason, I expected
it to work like it wasn't just an inanimate object.
I had no witnesses. What puzzles me most is that
I didn't feel any fear. It was fun. I saw
a kind of personality in that balloon. As I grew older,
nothing similar ever happened again. I have no idea what
any of that was, or if it was just a dream,
but it didn't feel like a dream, and my mom's
memory of the first event confirms at least that something
happened while I was awake. Story twenty three. This past summer,
I was dog sitting for some friends of mine. They
have a medium sized, older black lab. Such a beautiful dog,
she rarely barks. One night, I woke up around three
to the sound of barking outside. I listened for a moment,
trying to figure out where it was coming from, and
realized it was her. I knew for a fact she
had been inside when I went to bed, and there
was no one else in the house. I got up
to let her in, assuming I had somehow misremembered and
left her outside, only to find the back door wide
open with the dead bolt still in the lock position.
The female side of the dead bolt was set into
a load bearing beam and showed no signs of damage.
The dog came running in as soon as I got there.
I shut the door and spent the rest of the
night trying to calm down. The next day, I tried
everything I could to figure out how that door opened
while the dead bolt was engaged. I slammed into it
with my shoulder, tested the hinges. Nothing. I thought maybe
it was spring loaded and the door wasn't fully latched
the night before, so when the dog pushed on it,
it could have opened and the lock re engaged after.
But no, that wasn't it either. Everything was working normally.
There were valuable near the door untouched. I didn't sleep
well the rest of that week, and I still get
chills thinking about it. Before anyone suggests sleepwalking, my bedroom
door was fully closed and I have no history of sleepwalking.
Still don't. Story twenty four. When my son was around
two years old, he started coming home from preschool singing songs,
but we couldn't always understand the words. Most of the time,
we'd eventually hear the same song somewhere else and he'd
pointed out as the one he was singing. For example,
he kept singing something that sounded like vordebete ci and
we had no idea what it was. Then one day
we were watching Transformers on Netflix and we realized he
had been trying to say more than meets the eye.
This happened multiple times He'd sing something we didn't recognize,
and eventually we'd figure it out. But just before he
turned three, he started singing something different, what sounded like
tristabel bebe and sometimes tristable yuckie. We assumed it was
another song or phrase we'd eventually understand. We even asked
his preschool teacher, but she had no idea what it
could be. Not long after, he changed schools and the
mystery phrase never got an answer. To this day, he
occasionally still says it and we still have absolutely no
idea what it means. It's just become one of those
family mysteries we may never solve. Story twenty five. I
know I accidentally created a mystery for someone else, and
they might still be trying to figure it out all
these years later. I've been with my boyfriend for five years.
In the first couple of months, we kept things almost
completely quiet. The complication was that my ex, who i'd
broken up with amicably, was kind of friends with my
current boyfriend. They were both in the same friendship circle,
and to avoid drama, we just kept it under wraps.
One evening, I was hanging out at my boyfriend's place
when a mutual friend of my ex showed up unannounced
to return a video game. I quickly ran upstairs to hide. Honestly,
it was kind of fun and exciting. She stayed downstairs
chatting for a while, maybe an hour. I could hear
my boyfriend trying to gently get her to leave since
I was stuck upstairs. Eventually she went to go, but
then came back in because her car wouldn't start. My
boyfriend offered to go out and take a look. I
should mention we had a cat. When the friend had arrived,
I heard my boyfriend say he was putting the cat
in the kitchen because she was allergic. The kitchen had
a solid door with a sturdy handle. When they both
stepped out, I got really thirsty and went down to
the kitchen to grab a drink. I didn't realize the
cat had slipped out into the living room. I ran
back out of the kitchen and closed the door behind me.
When they came back inside, I heard the friend exclaim
what the actual heck? She was baffled to see the
cat sitting in the living room. She even tested the
door handle trying to figure out how the cat got out.
She was absolutely convinced she'd seen my boyfriend shut the
cat in the kitchen, and he confirmed he had. She
talked about it for months afterward, trying to make sense
of it. I always wonder if she still thinks that
cat had magical powers. Story twenty six. I was a
freshman in college when I started receiving a series of
mysterious and increasingly threatening phone calls. At the time, I
was pledging a fraternity and assumed some of the brothers
were pranking me. The calls always came from a restricted number.
At first, they seemed harmless, asking how I was enjoying
the pledging experience, that sort of thing. But over time
they got darker. The caller started making threats, saying I
was going to be hurt or worse. The weirdest part
wasn't even the threats it was when the caller began
contacting random people in my life and telling them that
I was in love with them. There was no pattern
to who these people were. Many were men. Now I
am queer, but I was deeply in the closet at
the time, and I'm certain none of the fraternity brothers
knew that. I only found out because people, some of
whom I hadn't spoken to in years, started independently reaching
out to me, asking why they were receiving bizarre voicemails.
Eventually I could in front of the fraternity's president and
told him to ask the brothers to knock it off.
He seemed genuinely confused and insisted no one in the
fraternity was behind it. Eventually the call stopped, but to
this day, I still wonder how the caller a knew
such intimate details of my life and b why they
would spend so much time and energy doing something so
strange and seemingly pointless. I'd like to know who it
was one day, but I've mostly accepted that I never will.
Story twenty seven. Back in college, there was a girl
I really liked. Her smile could brighten the gloomiest day.
I remember it doing just that once. She had been
struggling academically and was falling behind. Before winter break, I
finally gathered the courage to ask her if she'd want
to go out with me sometime. She said yes. One
day during my vacation. This was in two thousand and eight,
I really wanted to talk to her. I had her
number saved and almost dialed it. I was in a
different country at the time, visiting family, but something stopped me,
maybe a bit of ego. I thought she could have
called me too, so I didn't call and just went
about my day. The next morning, several seniors and classmates
contacted me with devastating news she had passed away. Apparently
she had gotten access to her uncle's service revolver and
taken her own life. I reread the messages and news
articles over and over. The timeline seemed to match the
very moment I'd almost called her. I still wonder what
might have happened if I had just dialed that number.
Maybe I could have said something. Maybe I couldn't have
done anything. I've never told anyone about this, not the
people I've dated, not my family, No one knows. I
guess this felt like a good place to finally share it.
The anonymity makes it easier. Story twenty eight. It was
around ten pm on a Tuesday night. My friend Danny
and I had this tradition of hitting the McDonald's drive through,
grabbing some food, and parking back at his place inside
a trailer park complex. We'd sit in the car, eat
and watched conspiracy videos on his phone. We talked a
lot about the wild things people claimed to have seen,
even though neither of us had ever experienced anything strange.
Around eleven thirty pm, we were sitting in my car
watching a video when suddenly a bright light flashed across
a third to half of the sky. It only lasted
a second and then disappeared. The light was incredibly bright,
but oddly it didn't illuminate the ground or surroundings. We
both froze and stared at each other. Then it flashed again.
You saw that, right, I asked, Yeah, what the heck
was that? Danny replied It flashed once more, and we
both freaked out, jumped out of the car and started
recording on our phones, but the light never came back.
Around midnight, I drove home and stopped at a nearby
subway that's opened twenty four to seven to ask if
anyone working had seen it. They hadn't. We later looked
up videos and tried to figure out what it could
have been, but nothing matched. It was a bright white
light that filled a massive section of the sky, with
no sound, no rumble, and no glow on the ground.
I was seventeen when it happened. Now I'm twenty three,
and we still have no clue what it was. I've
told a lot of people about it. It's not that
they don't believe me, but it's really hard to describe
the scale of what we saw. Most people shrug it
off like it was just a flashlight or something small.
But this thing filled what looked like half the sky.
It was pure white and blinding, but it didn't cast
any light on anything else. I've watched tons of lightning videos,
and I can say with one hundred percent certainty it
was not lightning. Story twenty nine. I'm fourteen years old
attending a summer camp organized by one of the local churches.
I'm wearing a silly, funny hat because that's what nerdy,
chubby kids who use humor as a defense mechanism tend
to do. The hat makes absolutely no sense, but at
some point I get this strange feeling that a girl
is flirting with me. We didn't really know each other,
though we had gone to the same sky for six years.
At that point. She was a year younger, cute and popular,
and me, I'm overweight and nerdy, so I naturally assume
she isn't flirting. On the last evening, I returned to
the tent I share with two other boys and notice
that my hat is missing. I had left it in
the tent because we had attended some kind of evening mass.
It was strange, but not the end of the world.
Even stranger. Under my pillow, I find a pair of
girls underwear. How did they end up there? I asked
the other boys if they're messing with me, but they
insist they're not involved at all. A couple of months later,
during the annual school play, I'm in the audience. The
cute girl's older sister is on stage doing a skit,
and the hat she's wearing looks exactly like the one
I lost. I have so many questions, but none of
them have ever been answered. It's been twenty six years,
and I doubt they ever will be. Story thirty my
good friend in college roommate, went missing at sea. He
disappeared on a beautiful sunny day in Biscayne Bay. He
was an incredible experienced sailor, having represented the US in
the London Olympic Games and had spent his entire life
on and around the ocean. His inflatable boat was later
found that day, tangled in some mooring lines in the
same harbor he had departed from. His life jacket, wallet,
and cell phone were found on the boat, but there
was no sign of Trevor. The GPS showed he had
sailed directly to a specific spot in the bay where
he kept crab and lobster traps. Then the boat appeared
to zigzag back and forth before eventually drifting back into
the harbor. Most people think he drowned, but this man
was an incredible athlete and knew the water as well
as anyone could. For context, Biscayne Bay is a shallow
body of water with a sandy bottom and crystal clear water.
Anything floating would be visible from the sky. A massive
three day search and rescue operation was launched involving tied scientists, drones, helicopters,
and a fleet of boats. They scoured the area thoroughly,
but his body was never found. Story thirty one. When
I was around thirteen years old, I was playing football
with friends at a local park. The field was massive,
big enough to fit about five full sized football pitches.
During the game, I noticed a woman maybe one hundred
meters away taking photos of us, specifically me, with a
large camera. It really looked like she was focusing on me,
as I was playing goalkeeper and was standing apart from
the other kids. She had long black hair, was dressed
all in black, but was too far away to clearly
see her face. I thought it was strange, but carried
on playing. By the time I mentioned it to my friends,
she had vanished. Later that week, at home, I went
outside to take the rubbish to the garden bin. It
was already dark, though probably not too late, maybe around
eight pm. Our garden was about one hundred feet long,
lined with flowers and bushes on both sides. As I
opened the bin, I saw two large flashes on the
right hand side of the garden, down near the bushes.
I froze in fear. Then another flash, exactly like a
camera flash, went off, and I bolted back inside. For
some reason, I didn't tell my parents. Maybe I thought
they wouldn't believe me. There was no logical explanation, and
it never happened again. I'm twenty eight now. This happened
fifteen years ago, and I'm still totally confused by what
happened that night. Story thirty two. One night, I was
sitting with my mom watching TV, waiting for my older
sister to get home. My mom was on one couch
and I was on the other. We were upstairs in
the family room, which overlooked the stairs connecting the first
and second floors. It was around midnight. My mom was
trying to stay awake, though she kept dozing off. She
was angry at my sister for breaking curfew again and
didn't want her sneaking in unnoticed. We'd been watching TV
for about an hour when we heard the downstairs front
door open. We heard shuffling around, no big deal. We
assumed it was my sister. My mom sat up waiting
for her to come up the stairs. We waited and waited.
Then we finally heard someone coming up the stairs, but
the steps were slow, heavy, and accompanied by strange guttural noises.
We watched as someone reached halfway up the stairs and stopped.
In the dim light of the TV, we could only
see a silhouette from the shoulders up, just standing there
staring at us, and we were staring back. After a moment,
the figure turned, went back downstairs and exited out the
front door. My mom looked at me and we were
both completely weirded out. About five minutes later, my sister
walked in loud and obnoxious as usual, chatting on her phone,
turning on lights, and acting totally normal. She had no
clue what had just happened. While my mom grilled her
for being late, she also questioned her about the weird
behavior at the door. My sister was genuinely confused and
had no idea what my mom was talking about, and
I could tell my mom believed her. My sister wasn't
into pranks and she wasn't creative or sneaky enough to
pull something like that off. Later that night, my mom
came into my room and told me never to tell
my sister what had happened. She said my sister was
such a scaredy cat that it could seriously mess her up.
We still don't know what or who it was. Maybe
it was a drunk neighbor who walked into the wrong house.
Maybe it was something worse. We'll never know. Story thirty three.
I studied abroad in Florence, Italy last fall. My girlfriend
was also studying abroad that semester, but in Prague. During
the third weekend of the semester, she came to visit me.
We had a pretty normal day exploring the city, and
around six or seven pm we decided to head back
to my apartment so I could introduce her to my roommates.
I was living on the fourth floor of an older
apartment building about half a mile from the Duomo. On
rainy days, the building gave off a weird smell, but
that's pretty common in older European cities. Other than that,
it was a great place. When you enter the building,
there's a long, windowless hallway that leads to the stairwell,
which connects to all the apartments. There's a button near
the entrance that turns on the hallway lights for about
five minutes. You can also find one of these buttons
on every floor so you don't have to walk in
total darkness. When we walked in, the lights were already on,
which wasn't common but probably meant someone had just come
in or was on their way out. We got about
halfway down the hallway when the lights shut off, leaving
us in total darkness. No big deal. I pulled out
my phone to use the flashlight, but as I was
doing that, we heard footsteps behind us. At first, they
were slow, then louder, then faster, until it sounded like
someone was sprinting toward us. Florence has a reputation for
pickpockets and thieves. I'd already been robbed twice, so I
assumed someone had slipped in behind us to mug us.
I quickly pushed my girlfriend behind me, raised my hands
to defend myself, and then just like that, the lights
flicked back on and the sound stopped. We looked at
but no one was there. Totally freaked out, we ran
upstairs in my apartment. I still have no explanation for
what happened in that hallway. Story thirty four I was
seventeen and working at a gas station. My mom was
the manager. On weekends, I opened the store by myself
at five am. I followed the usual routine, opened the store,
completed my morning tasks, and waited for customers. Eventually, someone
came in to buy something, but I couldn't see the
buttons on the register. Everything looked spotty and blurry. The
customer asked if I was okay, then told me I
was bleeding. I reached back and touched my head. My
hand came back covered in blood. I don't remember much
after that. The customer called nine to eleven. At some
point I apparently called my mom and told her something
was wrong, but I don't remember making that call. My
mom said the ambulance was already there when she arrived.
She told me she nearly passed out from the sight
of all the blood coming from my head. I ended
up with a concussion, stitches, and a ride to the hospital.
To this day, I have no idea what happened. There
was a security camera aimed at the register, but whatever
happened to me didn't happen there. There was no blood
anywhere in the store, only on me, and nothing was missing.
That was over fifteen years ago, and I still don't
know what caused it. Story thirty five. I woke up
in bed and couldn't move my body, but I was
one hundred percent awake and fully aware. I honestly thought
I had been paralyzed from the neck down because I
could move my eyes and look around the room. A
dark shadow seeped in from under the door and slowly
took the shape of something that looked like a cross
between the Grim Reaper and a bansheet. Though it didn't
have a scythe it looked like a dark specter in
humanoid form. It moved around the room with long, shadowy
arms that seemed to be feeling their way through the space.
It moved as if it were assessing me, not in
a threatening way, but I still felt an overwhelming dread.
It felt like this thing was waiting for me to die.
I've never been more terrified in my life. It felt
like it lasted forever. Slowly, I began regaining the ability
to move my body, but I was extremely weak. I
tried lifting myself with my elbows, but I collapsed again,
completely drained. The shade was still there, clearly visible, but
it began to shrink. As I gathered more strength and
managed to fall out of bed and stand up, the
shadow rapidly dissipated. What made this so terrifying was that
I'm not a religious or superstitious person, but I know
without any doubt that I saw what I saw. I've
never told anyone because I knew no one would believe me.
People might say it was a hallucination, but I've never
experienced anything like that in my life. I've never taken drugs,
never been on medication, never hallucinated before or since. This
thing looked one hundred percent real. And what terrified me
wasn't just the paralysis. It was how real it looked.
I'm a logical thinker. I've always thought of superstition and
the supernatural as nonsense, but this event shook me. I
actually found myself shouting into the empty room for it
to come back. I looked under the bed, checked the house,
hoping it would return. I wanted to talk to it.
The fear had turned into curiosity and then into frustration.
As much as I don't ever want to go through
that again, some part of me wishes it would return,
just so I could understand what it was. I know
how this sounds, but I was wide awake, fully conscious,
not dreaming. It happened, and I will never forget it.
Story thirty six. This happened when my family was spending
the night at my grandmother's house. I was around ten
to twelve years old and I've never been able to
explain it. I had been asleep and woke up from
a nightmare about a werewolf like creature with golden, glowing
eyes chasing me. I always slept completely under all of
my blankets, so when I woke up, I was in
total darkness and completely covered. It was hot, but I
was too scared to move. Still, I was old enough
to calm myself down and recognize I just had a nightmare. Eventually,
I worked up the courage to lift the blankets just
a little to let in some air. I chose the
side of the bed not facing the wall. The moment
I lifted the blankets, I saw the golden eyes. I immediately
ducked back under and told myself I was imagining things.
I took a breath, braced myself, and looked again. The
eyes were still there. I was frozen with fear. I
couldn't move. I just laid there, terrified. After what felt
like forever, I finally screamed for my dad. It took
a few tries, but he eventually came in and turned
on the light. I sat up, crying. We both looked
over at the same time and saw that the desk
chair next to my bed had been pulled out and
was facing me. My brother was in the same room
the entire time, and somehow didn't wake up through any
of this. People always say it was sleep paralysis, but
I was definitely awake. I was moving, speaking, aware of everything.
I don't know what it was, but it still scares
me to this day. Story thirty seven. A couple of
friends and I really enjoyed smoking in high school. We
got into it later than most and had heard plenty
of stories from other classmates about getting caught by parents
or the police, so we decided to be extremely careful
to avoid getting caught. We kept all our stuff in
a plastic cereal container wrapped in camouflage duct tape. We
called it the box. Inside the box, we stored a
small bong, a helix pipe, rolling papers, swishers, grinders, and
a glass jar. The box would get moved between hiding
spots in our neighborhood. The rule was simple. If it
wasn't at one of our houses, we couldn't get caught
with it. We always made sure no one was watching
when we picked it up or dropped it off. At
one point, we were storing the box behind a tree
about fifteen yards off a quiet street, near a few
empty lots next to a large house. We dug a
shallow hole behind the tree and hid the box there,
covering it with leaves and brush to keep it concealed.
One day after school, we went to pick it up
like we always did, but this time something was off.
The jar was missing. It had contained some rolling papers, stems,
and a small bag with about three point five grams
maybe forty dollars worth. Everything else was still in the box,
about four hundred dollars worth of paraphernalia untouched, but the
jar was gone. Every now and then one of us
brings up the missing jar. Every time, it's followed by
a few minutes of silence as we all quietly wonder
what could have happened. To this day, we're still baffled
by the great mystery of the missing Jar. Story thirty eight.
About twenty years ago, I started chatting with a woman
in a chat room. The conversation was deep, and we
quickly became attracted to one another. We ended up chatting
for months. Though we never spoke on the phone or
met in person, we had a strong connection and discussed
a lot of complex personal topics. I don't think we
even traded pictures. The thought crossed my mind that maybe
I was being catfished, but nothing bad ever happened. We
just eventually stopped chatting. Every now and then i'd log
in to see if she was online, but she never was.
Five or six years later, my life fell apart. I
moved to a new place and started over. I was
in a very low place in grasping at anything that
might lift my spirits out of habit or desperation. I
logged back into that old chat client, and like a
sign from the universe, she was online. We instantly reconnected
like no time had passed. This time we did trade pictures.
She was gorgeous, and to my surprise, she didn't think
I was a troll either. It felt like something straight
out of a movie. I was ecstatic. It genuinely felt
like fate. Still in the back of my mind, I
was waiting for the other shoe to drop until she
told me she would be in my town for a
conference and suggested we meet in person. So we did,
and it was that's amazing. It was like a fantasy
unfolding in real life, and I couldn't have dreamed a
better version of it. At the end of the night,
she invited me back to her hotel room. I went.
We spent hours together in the most electric, intimate connection
I've ever had. It's hard to even describe. Around four AM,
I had to leave because I needed to be at
work in two hours. I'll never forget the moment I
walked out the door, her flawless figure leaning in the doorway, whispering,
please don't go, but I had to. Over the next
two weeks, we kept talking and made plans to see
each other again. The day came, she texted me that
she was on her way and would arrive in about
four to five hours. But six hours later I hadn't
heard from her. I kept trying to reach her, but
she never responded. She never resurfaced. I spent years trying
to find her again. I never discovered any sign that
something bad had happened to her. I got no closure.
I have new life now and I'm happy, but I
still think about her every time I drive past that hotel.
It feels like I met a ghost that became real
for a brief moment, and I wonder what would have
happened if I had let her pull me back through
that door Story thirty nine. About two years ago, my
family and I went on vacation for a week and
a half. We had someone lined up to take care
of our cats and dogs while we were gone, and
we knew she was doing it. She kept in contact
with my sister on Snapchat the whole time. Everything seemed fine.
We got home around midnight one night. Her friend had
been there earlier that day and everything was reported to
be normal. But when we walked in the door, the
house smelled awful. It was a horrendous combination of cat urine,
sour milk, and rotting garbage. That description doesn't even begin
to convey how overpowering and disgusting it really was. The
smell filled every room and made the entire house nearly unbearable.
We were too exhausted to stay anywhere else that night.
All we could do was open every window and try
to air it out. Luckily, the room I was staying
in didn't smell nearly as bad as the rest of
the house, so I just dealt with it being a
night owl. I stayed up the rest of the night
on my computer. About an hour later, once everyone else
was asleep, the smell hadn't faded at all. It was
still just as strong. But I was hungry despite having
zero appetite because of how bad it was. I wrapped
a shirt around my mouth and nose to filter out
the odor and went to the kitchen, where it was
much worse. I put the shirt down, opened the fridge,
and then the smell was gone. I mean completely gone,
not weaker, gone. From the moment I left my room
to the moment I opened the fridge, maybe fifteen seconds
had passed. That's it. But in that short window of time,
the overwhelming stench that had filled the house just vanished.
I know that might not sound like a big deal
when you read it, but I can't explain how bad
the smell was, or how sudden and complete is disappearance was.
I've tried to think of rational explanations, but nothing fits.
It's one of those things that has never left my mind.
I still think about it because it was just so bizarre.
A house filled with an unbearable odor one moment, and
the next it's gone without a trace.