'I heard a high, whispery voice in the middle of the night...'
1/30
Years ago I was surfing the internet late at night with my fiance’s bro sitting at the desk next to me. We were watching stupid videos on Youtube, when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a can of soda move across the desk.
I’m thinking, “nope nope nope” and just keep calm and carry on. BUT he asks me, “Did that co*ke can just move?”
I told him that I wasn’t going to say anything, but YES it did just move. We were both pretty freaked out.
Fast forward two years later. Middle of broad daylight (i.e. hardly scary) I had a drink sitting on the desk that had been there for a little while when I see a drip of condensation slide down to the bottom…the drink then moves an inch or two.
Basically, if I put a drink on a specific part of that desk there is a bit of an incline and if condensation gets under it and it will move an inch or two.
For two years that moving can story was my go to “ghostly encounter” story.
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2/30
When I was a kid, my dad had the ability to make traffic lights turn green by saying “Turn green!” And it worked every time!
Sometimes we’d be at a light and I’d ask him to make the light change. He’d say something like, “I don’t feel like it,” but eventually he’d say, “Turn green!” and it would change. MAGIC!
I’d forgotten all about this until I started driving myself. Then one day I was at a stoplight and watching the green light on the cross-traffic so I’d know when my light was about to change.
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3/30
One time when I was about seven years old I heard a weird high whispery voice saying things that I couldn’t quite hear/understand. It frightened me a lot and the more panicked I got about it, the louder it got.
Years later, aged about fifteen, I realized that’s the sound my nose makes when I’ve got a really bad cold and I breathe in and out quickly.
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4/30
When I was much younger, my father would tell me stories before I went to bed. They were always stories about two guys named Andy and Pen who went on these awesome adventures together. I loved these stories and used to beg him to tell me them. He never read from a book and all the stories were original which amazed me. It wasn’t until about a year ago when I put two and two together: my dad’s name is Randy and mine is Ben. Andy and Pen. Makes the stories all that more special.
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5/30
My roommate and I lived in this two-story building that had an internal balcony that looked like it shouldn’t be able to stay up. When we moved in there was a crack on the ceiling of the ground floor just below the balcony that extended around 50cm towards the lounge. Over the year this crack propagated and got noticeably larger to the point that we started moving heavy items away from the top floor. After a year the crack was huge, ran the entire length of the room and looked seriously dangerous.
Turns out it was my flatmate being an idiot and was drawing an ever larger crack each week and only told me many years later.
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6/30
When I was little my dad convinced me that the car locks inside the car could be changed by shouting “DOORS LOCK!” or “DOORS UNLOCK!” Well obviously, whenever I shouted this, he would just push the button on his door and all the doors would magically follow my commands.
One day on a long car trip to visit family when I was 4 or 5 I was being a nuisance in the backseat and my dad was threatening to pull the car over.
A few miles down the road, he pulls the car over to get me out and give me a spanking and as soon as he slammed his door shut, I yelled “DOORS LOCK!” My mom started laughing hysterically and even my dad laughed so much that it got me out of trouble.
However, the illusion was ruined and they told me they had just been pushing the lock buttons.
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7/30
I had a goldfish that lived for years, and at one point (I must have been 4 or 5), started to turn blue. I just accepted what my parents told me, that that’s something that happens in a goldfish’s life, and never really questioned it.
Fast forward to my freshman year of high school. My biology teacher was talking about the lifecycle of a goldfish, and I raised my hand and asked when it turned blue. The teacher was like “What are you talking about?!” and I said “You know what, I have no idea.”
I went home and asked my mom – apparently, the fish that supposedly lived for years died about once a week and my parents just kept replacing it. At one point, beta fish were less expensive than goldfish, so they started getting the beta fish that were the most gold, and then eventually just said “screw it” and got blue ones. For years I thought that was just a part of the life of a goldfish
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8/30
I was going on a date with this guy, and we were supposed to meet at a restaurant. On my way there, I decided it would be sweet to bring him a flower.
I pulled into a gas station and went inside (mind you, this was kind of a rough part of the city and I was young and nave). After looking around for a minute, I said to the attendant, “Do you have flowers?”
“A rose?” He asked.
“Yeah, a rose, perfect!”
He gave me a really uneasy look, and said, “Do… Do you have your ID?”
“My ID? For what? To buy a rose?”
He just nodded while still looking at me like I was a lunatic. I mumbled something about changing my mind and left, thinking he was a pervert or something. I went on my date and didn’t think about it again.
Years later while working as a counsellor at a rehab, I discovered that a “rose” is slang for a crack pipe. I tried to buy a crack pipe.
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9/30
I had 6 pet crayfish at one point in university. About a week in I find a body of a cray fish that I assumed died in the night, so I went outside and buried it in the court yard, gave it an honourable send of.
I get back to the tank and see that there are still 6 cray fish, and I distinctly remember that I only had 6, so now there must only be 5.
So I shrugged it off and just assumed I miscounted in the beginning.
Come the next few days and I find at least 4 more bodies, but there are still 6 live crayfish in the tank, I assume that I have lost my mind and spend countless hours awake trying to figure out what the heck is going on. There’s no way that they can have babies that grow up that fast.
My friends aren’t sad enough to keep buying more and putting them in when one dies (OR ARE THEY?!?) So I strongly believe that I have lost my mind/I own Satan’s fish and this honestly ruined me, I just could not find a logical answer and it was driving me insane.
About 4 days later I Google ”Crawfish division/multiplications” because I am that far gone, it was then I learned that crawfish shed their entire exoskeletons very often, I was burying their exoskeletons/shells.
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10/30
One time I saw a light flash across the sky when I was five or so. It zoomed around and I thought UFOs were a thing. No one told me otherwise.
Flash forward many many years later, I learned what a spotlight was.
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11/30
When I was young my family took us to the park for an Easter egg hunt. When we got back home there was an easter basket in my bed that wasn’t there when I had left.
I was 18 when mom told me she paid the landlord $10 to put it there. Couldn’t ask for a better mother.
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12/30
When I was a kid I thought I was allergic to the sun because when I looked up toward it, I would sneeze. Years later, I found out it’s called the photic sneeze reflex.
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13/30
I wonder if anyone else remembers a program called “Strange But True”? Freaky as hell.
Anyway, one episode focused on a poltergeist, scared the hell out of me I can tell you.
One bit I especially remember, was that the woman of the house went into the bedroom to tell the kids off for running around, only for them to protest their innocence.
As she turned away, the heavy chest of drawers moved itself in front of the door. The camera then zoomed into this womans face, and the look on her face scared the sweet bejesus out of me.
So anyway, I had nightmares for days, and finally admitted what had me so scared to my Dad. He promised me that he’d sort the ghosts out for me, and so I went to bed a little less scared than the night before. When I woke up, something had moved my and my brother’s bunk bed into the middle of the room, without waking us!
I was suitably terrified for a long time, had nightmares for a good while, on and off.
It wasn’t until my 14th/15th birthday when the family were all sat round reminiscing, that my eldest brother laughed and said “Hey, remember the time we all moved Nathan’s bed to scare him?”
Was not best pleased I can tell you. Turned out that my Dad had tucked me into bed, then gone and told the other 5 kids of his great idea, and as a family activity had decided to move my bed, then after it was done sent my brother to bed in his bunk.
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14/30
One day a shower curtain showed up at my door from amazon. I didn’t order it, it wasn’t in my purchase history but it was addressed to me. And we needed a new shower curtain!
A marketer friend of mine said that Amazon is trying out a new scheme where they just send high-value customers free stuff based on what amazon thinks they need. I was blown away.
Turns out a house guest sent us one as a gift but never mentioned it. We found out about a year later while we were having dinner with him.
Mystery solved.
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15/30
Came home from school (4th grade) and ran into my room to change into baseball pants and grab my bat bag cause I was running late to practice. Open my bedroom door and my older brother and his girl were banging in my bed. They just told me they got tired and his sheets were washing. I thought nothing of it. Changed, grabbed my bag and on my way to practice I was. None the wiser.
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16/30
My friend was born and raised in Poland and moved to England in her mid-teens. She had a poor but manageable grasp on English. On a shopping trip, she couldn’t find what she was looking for and asked for help. She asked the assistant for what she understood translated to chicken breast. He stared at her and showed her where they were and kind of left the situation as fast as he could yet, always glancing at her awkwardly whenever she returned to that shop. She found out months later that although she pretty much got the right words she couldn’t go around asking people to show her where the chicken tit* were.
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17/30
I had a very controlling boyfriend from 16-19. I tried breaking up with him but he would pretend it never happened and continue to come around. Things got scary and all of a sudden he ended up spending the winter break out of state with his childhood best friend and never came back.
He wrote me one letter and I responded and that was it. He never contacted me again even after I knew he was back. Fast forward 20 years (yes, 20) and I add him on Facebook. It turns out my mom told his parents everything including the time he hit me (which I didn’t know she even knew about).
My mother told his parents to make sure he would leave me alone or she would make sure he left me alone herself. So his parents sent him away and warned him to move on. She was also having his letters sent back to him so he couldn’t sucker me in and informed his parents he was still contacting me.
I was afraid to tell my mom so many details but it seemed like she knew everything anyway. She was my hero and I didn’t even know.
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18/30
When I was a kid, we went to the next town over for a rock show. On the way home we drove by a farm with what looked like a UFO hovering next to it. My dad, the alien/UFO enthusiast, is flipping out. I am screaming in the back seat, urging my mother to drive. For years I refused to go to that town.
One day my mother asked if I wanted to go to Dairy Queen. Not thinking I said yes. halfway there I remember it’s in that town. Scared to learn the answer, I waited in terror to learn the answer.
It was a bright barn light. This is why I am terrified of aliens.
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19/30
When I was 12 I was at school and ran into my teacher talking to my mom. My teacher turned to me and said, “Have your ears been ringing? Because we’ve been talking all about you!”
So I assumed for years when your ears rang someone was talking about you. Man did I think I was popular but also found it weird.
Turns out it’s tinnitus and runs in my family.
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20/30
When I was a kid, it started to storm when I was outside playing. Continued to play, and lightning struck a tree right down the street. A little bit of bark flew off but that was it, nothing major happened otherwise. Fast forward about a week and it’s hot and dry now, and I am outside playing, and that same tree caught on fire.
Never understood why it would just light up in flames like that spontaneously. Fast forward years later and I understand the physics of trees, tree sap, superheating, and the insulating properties of wood. The lightning dried out the tree from the inside, baked the sap outwards, and once the superheated sap got to the surface, flames! Kinda cool to know/have seen.
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21/30
Throughout high school I would notice someone stopping at our neighborhood’s group of mail boxes around 3 in the morning. During my freshmen year of college my friends and I smoke ourselves stupid and I get on the topic of this mail thief.
Everyone gets all excited about catching this criminal mastermind so we drive out to my mom’s house (who was away on vacation) and wait. It gets to 3:30am and no mail thief so we head out to leave. We see the car as we are driving away and start to give chase.
This turns into a high speed 85mph chase through country roads with my friend hanging out the passenger window taking pictures of the license plate.
We eventually arrive back in town and the thief loses us but we figured we had enough prove to bring this guy down. Just to make sure we get into two more chases later in the month but used my friends car and it couldn’t keep up.
About 6 months later I get pulled over by a cop and he asks to search my car because it matches the description of someone impersonating a police officer trying to pull over a newspaper delivery woman. I internally freak out as I realize I had been chasing the girl that dropped off my mom’s paper this whole time but play dumb to the cop and get let go.
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22/30
My parents used to drag my sister and me to visit my great grandmother in the nursing home. She was in her nineties, totally blind, and maybe 90 pounds. She would sit in her chair and she’d ask to touch our faces and she’d say how much we’d grown and she’d ask us questions and…stuff? It was weird. I was like 10 at the time. My folks would bring Hoodsies so it worked out in the end.
Anyway, we’d visit her and the lady in the bed next to her was always trying to talk to me. She knew my name somehow, but didn’t say much of anything other than that. I think she had dementia or something. My parents were polite to her but they’d angle me back towards Nan for some more face touching and general awkwardness.
I find out like a year ago that random other lady was actually my OTHER great grandmother, who was in the same room purely by coincidence. She was on my Dad’s side, and there was some big falling out or something, and so he never had any relationship with her. It wasn’t that she knew my name, it was that she thought I was my father, who I share a name with.
The only thing more mind blowing to me than finding this out was my fathers complete indifference to it. “Why didn’t you ever tell us? What the heck?”
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23/30
I started noticing almost all of my t-shirts had a funny stain. I would scrub the stain but it never came out, so most of my shirts ended up permanently marked. The odd thing was that it was a perfect circle, about 2 1/2″ in diameter and on my left breast, like a badge. I could not solve this, it was driving me crazy. It couldn’t be accidental – each mark was identical.
Then one night I was making dinner and went to use Pam cooking spray to grease a pan. The whole can was slightly greasy and to get the top off I really had to pull, when the top came off the can hit me in the chest and the greasy bottom left a mark on my shirt. I felt like an idiot – I had been doing it myself all this time.
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24/30
My parents bed didn’t made noises by itself. It was a lie. A horrible lie.
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25/30
When I was pretty young, 5 or 6, I had a semi-irrational fear of thunderstorms/tornados and once a week I would hear this low grumbling noise while I were in bed drifting off to sleep. This noise would scare the crap out of me as it sounded like a storm coming in right outside my window.
Fast forward a year or so for me to come to the realization on my own that it was my father rolling the dumpster out to the curb for trash day.
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26/30
When I was about 11 and my sister was 14, she came home from a sleepover with a large red welt on her neck. When my mother questioned her about it, she wove an epic tale of a fight amongst friends, culminating in the use of tootsie rolls as projectiles. Though she had remained neutral, she was sadly struck in the neck during the crossfire.
My mom apparently decided to see how far my sister was willing to take this story. She feigned indignation and said she wanted the phone numbers for the girl that threw the tootsie roll and the girl that hosted the party, to inform their mothers of the incident. There was talk of cutting those friends out of my sister’s life.
At the time, I was horrified that that had happened to her. Years later, I realized my mother decided to troll instead of addressing the fact that her daughter came home from a “girls-only” “supervised” sleepover with a hickey.
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27/30
My mom has MS, and didn’t want me and my sister to see how bad it could get when we were little. So we would go to chuck e cheese all day on her worst days during the summer, or if she couldnt cook during the school year we’d have eggos for dinner! Me and my sister thought those days were the coolest things, and so much fun. It took me years to realize she was doing it so we weren’t scared by her disabilities.
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28/30
Growing up, there was a hot tub in my backyard. When I was maybe 7 or 8, a friend and I were chilling in the tub when my older sister (10-11) demanded we vacate the tub so she and her friend could hot tub in peace. She and her friend offered to “flash” my friend and me in compensation. They did it trench coat style with their towels, then my friend and I went and did other stuff, not really having any idea what we were supposed to get out of that trade.
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29/30
When I was 9, I watched my mom get ready. She came into my room and looked through my closet saying she wanted to play dress up, and to pick out something nice for her to wear.
I gave her my favorite blouse, which was actually one of her old blouses that she gave me to play with. She sat at my desk and I pulled out all of my make up. I started to pretend that she was my client and I was her beauty consultant. She asked me to help her look beautiful, more beautiful than she’s ever been before. I told her what I thought would look the best, while I mimicked what she was doing in the mirror.
Years later I found out that my mother was getting dressed up because she was going to confront the woman that my father was having an affair with. It broke my heart. Still does. Ignorance is bliss.
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30/30
I would always get mad at my mom for packing me homemade sandwiches. All my rich friend’s parents were giving them ramen noodles for lunch and we would eat them raw and thought they were delicious. I always thought my mom didnt buy me that because she hated me and wanted me to eat boring food.
One day, in college, while buying ramen I recalled this stuff from my childhood. Realized that although we were poor, my mom made me home made lunches every day. And my rich friends parents were just sending them off with whatever took the least effort.
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