2024 Recap of Listener Experiences: Part 1

Thank you for joining me and welcome. I'm your host, Nick Ryan. Tonight's episode is brought to you by my newest supporters, Amanda and Michelle. Thank you so much for making the show possible.

2024 has been an interesting year for myself, my family, and the podcast. As usual, all of you have continued to show me how much you appreciate the show, and many of you have shared your deepest, darkest, and most personal experiences with me and the other listeners. For that, I am truly grateful, and I really hope you know how much I appreciate each and every one of you. Speaking of which, I'd like to extend birthday wishes to my friend and longtime listener, Sarah. I hope you have a wonderful day.

With that said, I hope the new year brings everyone good health, love, and prosperity, and I will do my very best to bring you even more paranormal mysteries throughout the coming months. In fact, I have several upcoming show topics that I think you'll find interesting.

And of course, for anyone that would like to share their unexplained experience, my door is always open. Now, as always, at the end of the year, I like to showcase many of the listener experiences that stood out to me. This is always difficult to do, because every experience that I receive is interesting in its own right. But there are those that are so unique, so heartwarming, or just downright chilling, that they stick with me. And these are what I would like to bring to you, tonight.

Let's begin.

This next experience comes to us from Jesse, and Jesse's story is called, Poltergeist Fatal Attraction. Jesse says, Hi Nick, I reside in Honolulu, Hawaii. I love listening to your podcast as I work graveyard security for a residential tower. I have had quite a few paranormal experiences throughout my life, and I'd like to share perhaps the most bizarre one with your audience.

first, a little background. I grew up mostly in a Catholic household in Hartford, Connecticut, but later in my teenage years my parents converted to Christianity. I joined the U.S. Navy out of high school to seek adventure, and fortunately I got stationed in Hawaii, where I decided to stay after my four years was up.

This bizarre poltergeist experience occurred about 16 years ago, and it lasted about three days. I had moved into a small studio in Chinatown because it's cheap rent, but it was a really old apartment building. I was working swing shift at the time for an airline catering company and would get home late, usually before midnight.

This one particular evening when I got home, as I opened the door to my studio and turned on the lights, I looked at my bed, and I saw what can only be described as a shadow rat running in slow motion across the top of my sheets. I thought that I was hallucinating, so I scratched my eyes, and I looked again, only to see this shadow rat jump into the wall next to my bed, and then disappear.

I thought to myself that I must be tired, so I took a hot shower and then played video games before going to bed. Now, as I lay in bed before drifting off the sleep, I started to hear scratching sounds coming from within the concrete wall right next to my bed, where the shadow rat had previously jumped into. The scratching sound was slow and very irritating, which made me angry as I couldn't sleep. I decided to put some headphones on and listen to relaxing music.

I eventually did fall asleep, and I slept peacefully, until the next evening. On the second night, as I returned home from work, I was stunned by what I saw on the wall next to my bed. There were three lines of black goo or slime, slowly oozing from the middle of my wall. I took a closer look after wiping the area with cleaning solution, but there were no holes in the wall.

Then it hit me. The shadow-rat from the night before must be causing this mysterious black goo somehow. I spent most of the night cleaning my wall which left me feeling upset. However, I managed to fall asleep a short time after. At least there were no scratching sounds that night.

As I slept, I had a somewhat romantic dream, where I was having a picnic with a beautiful, tall, Auburn-haired woman. This was a woman that I had never seen before. We kissed, and she told me that she was waiting for me on the other side. Now when I woke up, I couldn't figure out what she meant by the other side. I went to take a shower, and as I looked in the mirror, I was shocked at what I saw. I had several red hickeys on both sides of my neck.

How was this possible? I thought the hickeys would wash off as I showered, but to no avail. I went to work and was teased by my coworkers who thought that I had a new girlfriend, if only they knew the truth, but I couldn't tell them the truth, or they might think I was using drugs.

I felt perplexed throughout the day as I tried to figure out what was happening at home. Oddly enough, an answer came in the mail. It was a letter from a Catholic priest from another state. I opened and read this very revealing letter which warned me of danger.

Not only for me physically, but for my soul. It was revealed to the priest by the Holy Spirit to contact me regarding a young female poltergeist spirit that was tasked to ensnare me into hell. Now, everything that happened the previous two nights made sense.

The priest had included a special prayer to the blessed Virgin Mary, along with a church relic, to be placed next to my bed. That evening, I stilled my mind and recited the prayers I held the church relic. I also gave thanks to God for His intervention, as well as the way it happened. I went to bed that evening with a feeling of complete peace, the Renault scratching sounds, nor black goo oozing from the wall, and the Renault dreams.

Now the following morning I went walking to the store, and not a few yards in front of me, I froze for a couple of seconds, as who I saw walking towards me was the tall, auburn-haired woman from my dream. She was walking as if she was very angry. Eventually I regained my composure and resumed walking towards her, but as we came within a few feet of each other, she turned her head to look away from me.

And then she just vanished into thin air. I knew then and there that the Holy Prayer had worked, and my soul was safe from hell. I never saw her again. This next experience of the night comes to us from Lyra and Jay. And Lyra and Jay's experience is called terrifying rental house.

Hey there, Nick. My brother and I have been listening to your podcast and we really enjoy it. While we have been listening, we have been inspired to share with you some memories from when we were younger. I was about eight and my brother Jay was around six. In the summer of 2015, we went to a family reunion in a small development in Central Washington. It was a great family reunion, but the house we stayed at and some others nearby were just off.

This rental house that we stayed at was a small and relatively new building with two stories, including a basement. Us kids stayed in the TV room. We had no real problems with the place at first, but it started to get weird when we came home late at night.

The TV room was in the basement, and our sleeping bags were oriented horizontally across it. I was positioned at the end of the room, so I needed to step over the others to get out. My younger cousin, who we'll call Sarah, was sleeping next to me. That night, none of us could sleep, shadows danced in our peripheral vision, and an odd green light would come from the doorway. Keep this in mind as it's going to be important later in the story.

Now eventually I did fall asleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night for no reason. I looked up and still saw shadows dancing all around me, some of which took humanoid forms. For some reason or another, my brain thought, which lady? And when I mentioned this to my brother, his own odd memories surfaced about the shadows.

I was just a dumb kid, and I began to grow curious about where the green light I mentioned earlier was coming from, so I welded up the courage to wake up my cousin, Sarah. She groggily asked me what I was doing, and I pointed to the green light and said that I wanted to know where it came from. I then asked her if she wanted to come with me, and for some reason, she agreed.

So, we got out of our sleeping bags and stepped over the others to exit. I can also confirm that this was not a dream because my brother remembers me stepping over him. We followed the light and realized it led to nothing, but we were thirsty and we were up anyway, so we went upstairs to get some water. And this is when it happened.

A couple lights in the kitchen were on, but we couldn't focus on things like that for long. At this point, a relentless pounding erupted from the attic. I can't describe all the noises I heard, but I can try. There was knocking and scraping, almost like a rolling sound. Not all of them came from the attic, but some came from the side of the house as well.

It was a sound that was like a screwdriver coming from outside. That was the scariest night of our lives. Me and my cousin were so terrified that we hid under the counter in the kitchen, and we saw things moving outside the windows like they were almost floating.

My cousin was crying, and I was trying to comfort her but to no avail. I don't know how long this terror lasted, but it eventually got to the point where we woke up our grandma, and we told her what had happened. However, she said that she didn't hear anything, and she told us to go back to bed. I'd also like to note that our grandma is not hard of hearing. We were so terrified that she had to escort us back to the TV room.

Now, this next part is my brother's experience, and he will be typing this segment. Hey there, so my experience isn't as cinematic as Lyra's, but just as terrifying. This happened later, that same night. I wanted to get a drink of water, so I found it in me to get out of my sleeping bag, but I never made it past the stairs.

So, at the bottom of the stairs was a painting of a street with people and buildings on it. The moment I was in front of it, ready to go up the stairs, I looked at it, and I regret that choice, even now years later. It's really hard to describe what happened, but it was like every person, house, and street light in that painting, turned, and then stared at me. Let me just tell you that I immediately booked a non-stop flight back to my sleeping bag.

This last part is written by Lira. For a long time after this happened, my brain kind of convinced me that it was all made up. It wasn't until I discussed it with my brother that I realized that I had had an intense paranormal experience. Both of us have.

This next experience comes to us from Ethan, and Ethan's story is called, Hunting with History. Ethan says, Hello Nick, I was listening to your podcast about people's paranormal encounters in the woods while working the night shift for my current agency. These stories reminded me of an encounter I had while hunting in the woods of Cumberland County, Virginia.

In 2017, before I had gotten into the military and law enforcement, I was a long-haired college student at Longwood University. On my off time between classes and jobs, I would spend time at my buddy's farm in Cumberland, Virginia, being that he is also in law enforcement, will call him John.

John had inherited the property and the farmhouse from his grandmother. The property had been in his family for a very long time. The property consisted of around 200 acres, only 20 of which was cleared and an old farmhouse. The house, needless to say, was very old.

John and I would often walk the property, mainly to scout area for hunting and ensure there were no poachers on the property. John would tell me that there were Confederate soldiers buried on the property, and we would often walk upon unmarked graves on the property that were deep in the woods.

Now, John told me of two of his paranormal interactions on the property. It should be said that John, although younger than me, was very mature and was not known to exaggerate anything. He is the son of a command sergeant major, as well as he is currently a state trooper. Needless to say that when he told me about his paranormal interactions, I had no reason to doubt him.

John stated that when he was a kid, he was helping his grandmother move furniture on the back porch of the farmhouse. The back porch was like any old school southern plantation porch with a big window and rocking chairs. John said that as he put down a piece of furniture and looked up into the window toward the living room, he saw the reflection of a man in a gray uniform hanging from a noose on the old oak tree behind the house. John stated that when he turned around, there was nothing there.

John also told me of another time during hunting season when he had another paranormal encounter. John stated that one morning, as the sun was still rising, he came out of his front door to grab something from his truck. As he walked to his truck, he saw a man with no distinguishable features at the corner of his field, which was about 300 yards away from his truck.

He described the man as wearing a grey uniform with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He said that he called out of the individual several times, but there was no response. Being that this was hunting season and he had been having issues with the Hunt Club nearby both trespassing and poaching, he went to approach the individual.

When he went to confront the individual, they were no longer there. John stated that there were no footprints or even impressions on the grass. He said this was weird due to their still being due on the grass from the early morning, and if someone had been standing there, they would have certainly made an impression on the grass.

He also stated that there weren't any impressions in the brush and undergrowth that protected access into those words. There were branches, vines, and even high grass that someone would have to have walked through to get into those words from the field. John said that the vegetation was all untouched.

One day I decided to go hunting on his property during rifle season. I had a tree stand about 400 yards from the wood line of the field, and about 800 yards from the farmhouse that was on the property. My tree stand was set up on an old pine tree, and had a creek beneath it. The stand faced dense woods, which was advantageous because the deer would come from the deep woods through the creek to the drop zone by my stand.

the stand backed up to a series of pine and oak trees with large gaps in between them. Now, as it approached sunset, and as I sat with my Marlin 3030 lever-action rifle, I heard a series of noises that were behind me. Often, while hunting, the sound of squirrels frolicking around is often mistaken for the sound of a deer cautiously approaching. And at first, I thought the sound was either that of a deer, or a squirrel, but most certainly wildlife, either way.

As a result, I controlled my breathing and my movements. As I sat there, the sound evolved from careful and cautious, indicating wildlife to loud and reckless. It sounded like something heavy was walking carelessly toward my stand, breaking branches and crunching leaves in the process. As a result, I thought that this was somebody trespassing on John's land, so I turned around, but I saw nothing.

No squirrels, no birds, no deer, and no poachers. I then got a very uneasy feeling like I wasn't alone. I then faced back forward trying to shake the uneasy feeling and to take advantage of what little daylight I had left.

Now, shortly after that incident, right when the daylight began to drop beneath the trees, I heard what sounded like someone sprinting at full speed toward my tree stand from the back. It was something bipedal, and it was breaking every branch in its path on its way toward me.

Whatever was coming toward me couldn't have been more than ten yards out from my tree stand, and fearing that something was behind me, I turned around with my rifle raised, and the safety off. However, there was nothing there. I didn't stick around much longer to figure out what it was, and I packed it in for the day.

John to this day continues to tell me about his paranormal encounters. For a place that's so remote and quiet, it seems like a bustling epicenter. For paranormal activity.

This next experience also comes from Ethan, and Ethan's experience is called, Graveyard Shift. Ethan says, Hi Nick, I just started listening to your podcast while working the road on Night Shift for a Sheriff's Office in rural Virginia. I always enjoyed listening to stories of paranormal interactions and just recently began to dive into your series of podcasts and recollections of the macabre.

I figured I would offer a story of my own to your series in hopes that it would inspire others with similar backgrounds to share on your platform. Before I worked for my current Sheriff's Office, which although operates in a rural county, is the fastest developing county in Virginia, I worked for a smaller Sheriff's Office.

Now, for the sake of my current position and career, I will not mention the name of the county or the agency. However, it was a smaller agency which seemed to be stuck in a 1980s Mayberry-style form of law enforcement. This equated to none of the pleasantries of modern law enforcement. No cameras, no rifles, no computers, and most importantly, no backup.

At the time of this occurrence, we had three deputies and two sergeants to cover the entirety of the county. As a result, this meant that I often operated alone to cover 211 square miles of the county. Calling for backup meant waking somebody up by a phone call, hoping that they would answer, and then praying that they would get there in time.

Working as a sheriff's deputy in a rural county meant driving for hours and hours on end, occasionally stopping to chat with our one dispatcher in hopes of breaking the monotony of the shift. The roads were often poorly lit and often bobbed and weaved throughout the county, and as a result, driving for hours often required copious amounts of caffeine.

During a typical weekday, all calls for service and traffic usually stopped around 2am, and then the county turned into a ghost town. Often during these times, having completed every business check, warrant, or report that I had on the agenda for the day, I would often get creative in how I made the shift pass.

Our county is riddled with cornfields, old and dilapidated country churches, and unpaved back roads that lead to nowhere. I often drove through all these landmarks hoping that if I witnessed something paranormal it would give me the jolt of excitement that I needed to get me through the rest of my shift. It sounds crazy I know, but copious amounts of caffeine do not compensate for sleep deprivation.

For the longest time, I would drive through cornfields, hunting properties, abandoned businesses, and tucked away churches hoping to find something. One night, I got just what I was looking for, and then some. Now I had recruited my buddy to work with me, and he and I both were military police in the army, and he was trying to find a job on the civilian side in law enforcement.

One night he was riding with me in my patrol vehicle throughout the county, learning the fundamentals of law enforcement before he went into the academy. We had pulled into the county's middle school to conduct a security check around one in the morning, working the graveyard shift. The school had corn fields and woods surrounding the back of the facility, with the building facing toward the main roadway.

I had told my buddy to get out and check all the doors of the school. I told him that it was important to know all the entry and access points and to make sure that they were all secure as we had problems with school equipment going missing during the night. So he got out and began to make his way around the building while I stayed in the patrol vehicle and finished up on some reports.

At this point, I watched my partner cut the corner of the building, disappearing into the void of darkness, as eyes sat comfortably in the well-lit safe haven of my patrol vehicle. My radio then abruptly cuts the silence, and I hear my partner state that there is a man looking at him from the cornfields. He stated that he was wearing what he described as a long black trench coat covering his face, and that he was wearing jeans that appeared to be tattered and worn.

I jumped out of my vehicle and began full-out forest gum style sprinting towards him when my partner told me that he was in foot pursuit. He said that this man ran into the cornfields and he asked me if he should follow. However, I told him to stay where he was until I got to him.

When I finally caught up with my partner, he stated that this man ran inhumanly fast and almost disappeared like vapor in a ghost of wind. He told me that he had cut the corner of the building with his flashlight to check the doors, when he was overwhelmed by this feeling that he was being watched.

He said that he had turned toward the soccer field, which was the giant open grassy field that backed up to the corn field, and this was where he saw a man staring at him. He said that he didn't move a muscle and almost appeared to be in a trance-like state. He said he couldn't make out any facial features, even with the light of a flashlight and the darkness.

He stated that he called out to the man, Sheriff's Office, don't move. He then said that the man at first seemed unfazed by the command but continued to maintain his trance-like state without moving so much as a muscle. He said at that point he drew his pistol out and kept it at a ready position and maintained his flashlight on the entity as he walked down the hill toward it.

He said that after a few steps, the tall hooded figure went from a statue-like state to abruptly running as if it wasn't even touching the ground, only to fade away into the labyrinth of the cornfield.

Now, to most, this would be off-putting and petrifying. However, to us and our military-trained adrenaline-fueled mines, we wanted more of a rush, and we set off into the night to further explore anomalies. We drove to every creepy cemetery, abandoned building, and dark back road until we came across an old church, surrounded by growth, and of course, cornfields. We notified dispatch that we would be conducting a security check at the church.

We walked around the church where we observed what appeared to be a concrete stairway leading to a set of metal doors that led to what we believed to be a cellar. We made our way down the steps which were secured by two ironclad doors which were secured with lock and chain.

We noticed that the main door to the church was unlocked and made entry into the building. The building was old and riddled with dust, cobwebs, and mold. It looked like it hadn't been occupied in years. The pews had several generations of dust on them. The baptism pool was lined with dead spiders bigger than my boot, and the winding stairwell was riddled with news articles from the 1950s.

We had gone through room by room, and tactically and meticulously cleared every room to find nothing but abandoned musical instruments, leather-bound bibles, and broken glass. We then made our way out to the front door, towards my patrol vehicle. As we opened the doors to the patrol vehicle, we heard what sounded like someone opening and slamming a metal door with all their might, which was coming from the stairwell to the cellar that we had just cleared. It startled us both.

So we walked back to the stairway to the cellar doors, which were still sealed with lock, chain, and twenty years of rust, as if it had never been disturbed. It was then that we decided that we had had our fair share of the paranormal encounters, for the night. To this day we still talk about that night. We still work together, and we continue to look for things that go bump in the night, when the county sleeps.

I hope one day to hear this story on your podcast, and I hope that it was worth the read.

Our next experience of the night comes to us from Jeannie. And Jeannie's experience is called? It's just water. Jeannie says, Hello there. I found your pod via Amazon Music, and it's been a part of my daily life ever since. It was such a relief to find people who have had these experiences because I really thought that it was just me. Thank you for all your hard work, and please keep going. We are listening.

My experience happened about ten years ago when my daughter and I moved into an apartment. What struck me right away was the bedroom setup. The room was small and there was only one place to put the bed in. Right on the opposite side facing the bed was a walk-in closet with a huge mirror door. Our first night there I felt uneasy and I covered it with a sheet.

Fast forward a few months, it was the middle of the night, and I woke up suddenly, and I saw that the sheet had fallen off of this mirror. I was too tired to pick it back up, so I went back to sleep, thinking that I would fix it in the morning. Around 5 AM, I woke up again. Unlike the typical night terror, I wasn't paralyzed, but I knew that as I opened my eyes, there was a very heavy, dark presence that had been hovering a couple of inches away from my face, watching me.

It disappeared before my eyes were fully open, but I knew that it almost didn't get away in time because I saw it dissipating. It was scary, but I covered the mirror again, and thought that it wasn't coming back. A few weeks later, we got a cat. Her name was Jill. Now, Jill was a very anxious kitty.

When I would go to bed, she would jump up on the bed and walk around my head in circles. Of course, it was hard to sleep with that, so one night as she made her circles around me, I was lying on my right side and I used my left hand to gently press her down on the bed to show her that I wanted her to lie down. To my surprise, she did. She was in the nook between my belly and my knees. Imagine a person in the position of the letter L.

Her fur was soft and fluffy, and we both started drifting off. All of a sudden, she jumped straight up in the air. She cleared the space almost all the way to the ceiling from a lying down flat position. As soon as she landed, she dirted off the bed and ran out of the bedroom.

At this point, the feeling in the room was heavy. When I looked over at the closet, the sheet was once again, off. Now I didn't know how that was possible since I shut it with the side of it pinched by the door. I don't know what she saw on that bedroom wall that we were facing, but it scared her, and me. The next morning, my daughter asked me who the lady with the bonnet was, who was in her room at night.

At this point I had had enough, and I started to search for another place to live. Shortly before moving out, I was sitting in the living room watching TV and thinking about all these happenings and wondering if whatever it was would follow me. As I sat there, completely out of nowhere, a drop of water fell on my forehead.

How do I know that it was water? Well, I wiped it off, and I smelled it. I jumped up. It was daylight, but I grabbed the flashlight and a stepladder, and I felt the entire ceiling area right above where I was sitting. It was bone dry. Also, it was not raining that day. Also, did I mention that I lived on the second floor, so there was no other apartment above me.

I looked for that scientific explanation for about thirty minutes, but I couldn't find anything, so we finally moved away. Nothing came with us, thankfully, so I guess no harm done. It was, after all, just water.

Thank you so much for reading my story. Even if it doesn't make it into the podcast, it still felt nice to share this with someone who won't call me crazy when they hear my story. Take care and have a great day. Our next experience of the night comes to us from Michael and Michael's experience is called potential hereditary spirit.

Michael says,

I have an odd, long-lived, and ongoing experience I'd like to share, and I would ask, on the off-chance that you do share it, to call on this community for its thoughts. I have limited information outside of my own experiences. Forums and research have been helpful thus far, but sometimes suggestions from similar cases hold more weight. Any feedback is appreciated since I don't really know what to call this officially.

First, though, a little about me. I'm ex-military, a believer, and newly a family man. I have a three-year-old son with another on the way, so I'd like to think that there's not a lot that gets under my skin these days. I'm also no stranger to the paranormal, but I like to approach things from a logical standpoint first. This is a combination that I thank my family for, my mother's side of the family being especially sensitive. While my fathers are a bunch of skeptics,

Now, very rarely do I admit defeat, but this one has had me stumped for a while now. So, here it goes.

When I was little, I saw things, specifically and more often than not, a little girl. She had black hair, a dress which seemed to change with every appearance, and she'd always be carrying a book. Now I know she wasn't just a local that I coincidentally ran into all the time, as the little barrio in Puerto Rico I grew up in was small enough where everyone knew everyone.

But it was mostly because I specifically remember being asked questions and things like, what are you looking at? Or who are you talking to? Plus, she'd always appear in the strangest of times and places, in my room, at night, during a long car ride, or at my school, mid-class, etc.

Now, she didn't give off a positive feeling by any means, though I never felt danger at this stage. I would always just feel watched or judged. But after a while, I simply ignored it the best I could, and it wasn't long before I stopped noticing her.

Fast forward a few years to a Georgia high school, and I had gotten into some serious trouble, and I was waiting to be spoken to by our principal. And this was when I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and a chill ran down my spine. I'll never forget it because it made me physically twitch, but at that moment, in the corner of the room, I saw her again. It was undeniably the same girl, but older. It was almost as if she had grown with me.

She still wore her same dress and carried the same book. And even though I couldn't see her eyes, I knew that she was watching. From that point on, her sightings became more frequent. Not in any intrusive way, but it was like she was routinely checking up on me. I saw her again plenty during my military service, and even right before my own wedding. It didn't matter what the occasion was. She was always there.

My most memorable experience with her was a dream. Again, a few years separated from the last interaction. In this dream, she was a woman. The same hair, same dress, the same book, and the same feeling. She sat me down, opened the book, and started reading, pausing every now and then for my reaction or my response.

The only thing was, I couldn't understand the language that she was speaking, and it was intense. It almost felt like an interrogation of sorts, but I held my silence, frozen in fear. Mind you, this was the only instance where any sort of contact was attempted, and where I felt threatened by her presence.

Now, a lot of people seem to think that it could be a guardian angel, reasoning that my fear as mere fear of the unknown and her book being a record of my life. However, I'm hesitant to agree. If it was, and this book was something to be used for me on my judgment day, it should feel like she had an interest in my defense, instead of my prosecution.

Others have said just the opposite and recommended blessings and exorcisms from different churches. Then, of course, you have shadow people, which come in all manner of different experiences. Or there's the fact that it could have all just been in my head this entire time. However, the main reason I now grow concerned and want to know is this.

A few weeks ago I was putting my son to sleep. It had been a few hours in the dark, and the door to his room leading to the hall and the rest of the house was closed, and my wife was out with friends. He was almost asleep when, in his delirium, he sat up, looked at the corner, and asked, who's that?

I immediately froze and refused to turn around, but immediately I felt it. A dread washed over me and gave me the same uncomfortable chill as all those years ago. It was her, and for the first time it was no longer just me who saw her. I laid him back down, closed my eyes, and eventually drifted to sleep, later to be woken up by my wife when she got home. But this was the last straw.

I'm fearful that this will turn into one of those all too common. Hey, Dad, this is my new imaginary friend moments. I'm not too sure how to handle it, but there is a saying in my mom's family that evil feeds off of fear. And if our fears are not addressed, we risk passing those fears onto our children. And coincidentally, anything leaching off of that.

Now I certainly hope that's not the case, but it makes me wonder if I'm the first one, or if someone else in my family has seen her too. Sadly, I have spoken to my mom's side of the family about it, but to no avail, which only leaves me the skeptics to deal with.

I'll see if I find anything out and I will keep you posted with another submission down the line. But again, I am open to advise. Anyway, thanks for listening. It felt good to get this out. Cheers. Michael.

Our next experience of the night also comes to us from a listener in Finland by the name of Laura, and Laura had this to say. Hello, greetings from Finland, and thanks for the lovely podcast. I've been addicted to it even though it sometimes scares me so much. Anyhow, I have two stories which both are kind of related to things you've mentioned in your podcast. The first is Shadow People, and the second is Metz and Pito.

Now, as a side note, for anyone that doesn't know what Laura is referring to, Mitzen Pito, which I'm probably not pronouncing right, is a term in Finnish folklore which refers to the belief that the forest could hide or imprison people, or even domestic animals, such as cows or horses. The belief is that the forest does this so they cannot escape, and would be invisible to people who went in search for them. Laura goes on to say,

The first story I'll tell is about this strange entity I kept seeing as a child. My family kept moving a lot around Helsinki, and at some point we lived in this really fancy old building. This is where I met her, and that's also where she stayed when we left. I'd like to brush it off as just a child's imagination, but no, I do feel there is something more real when it comes to her.

I'm an early bird unlike the rest of my family. I'd wake up a few hours before my parents were my sister, and then I'd sneak out of our room to the living room and do stuff while not disturbing anyone else's sleep. That's when I was alone, and the oddities would happen.

I started noticing something peeking at me from behind corners or bookshelves. It had an old-fashioned black funeral dress, and the face was closer to that of elves than anything human. This strange creature never actually said anything, but it kept visiting me like that. Just thinking about it gives me the creeps after 23 years.

I told my parents who told me it was just my imagination, and my sister was too young to understand stuff like that, so there was no point in trying to tell her anything. I, however, knew that it was real, and I knew the creature had a name, which was Kaisa. I don't know if I came up with the name or if the creature somehow told me it, but that's what I called her. We moved away after roughly a year, but Kaisa stayed there. I wonder if she's still there, staring at her current flatmates.

The second story is from roughly 10 years ago. I was at my then boyfriend's family's summer cabin and his grandparents came there too. His grandmother told me that she was a really avid outdoors lady who loves walking in the woods around their house and she knows all the details. But on one occasion she had lost her way and nothing was where it should be and no one was around. Finally she got back to their house and things got more sensible after that.

This is the first time I had heard of Metz and Pito, I think, and it creeped me out a bit. The grandmother is from the countryside, but I am from the capital, and it's super urban, so I feel like the Central Park where I love going for walks is actually a forest. There are horses there, and some of them are pretty dark and become pretty much invisible in the darkness of autumn evenings amidst the pine trees.

I didn't see one and got super spooked when it made a noise, and I jumped out of its way into some brush, and that's when things got weird. This quote-unquote forest has a lot of weird and creepy stuff, like benches in really random places.

Streetlights in the middle of densely forested hilltops, and big open areas with ghostly dead trees. It's enough to make me feel uneasy in its normal state, but evading the horse managed to get me into the Metzen-Pito version of the park.

I had walked there dozens of times, but then I suddenly had no clue where I was anymore. The horse no longer made any sounds, and there seemed to be no one around. I tried to get to some familiar place, but simply couldn't find anything and kept getting more and more anxious. Eventually I found myself in front of a really creepy concrete tower that looked totally off limits for normal people, and it was covered in graffiti. This tower scared me back into reality, and I realized where I was.

Holding back tears I got out of the park, and I understood that that was what the grandmother was talking about. Thanks for reading, and please keep up the good work. Laura.

Our next experience of the night comes to us from Cassandra. And Cassandra's experience is called Mill Creek Canyon. Bigfoot. Cassandra says, Greetings my friend. I hope the holidays treated you kindly and that the start of this new year is treating you well. I know it's been a hot minute, but life has kept me quite busy lately.

Over the holidays, my daughters and I were talking about strange things we'd seen while hiking, camping, or even fishing. My youngest reminded me of a particularly interesting adventure that we all had, more than a decade ago. Now, where we live in Utah, we're surrounded by multiple canyons and mountainous peaks.

This story is related to a hike up one of these canyons, Mill Creek. Mill Creek is a beautiful little canyon with hikes ranging from short, easy trails to all-day athletic adventures over remarkably difficult terrain, ranging from boulders to dense, overgrown foliage. Once upon a time, I was more than able to run up those trails with no difficulty, but alas, age has caught up to me, and that's a thing of the past.

On this particular day, my girls and I had made it to the top in record time, where the remarkable view of the valley below spread out before us. Breathtaking doesn't really describe it, as it's something you truly need to see for yourself. Now, this is the early 2000s, and most cell phones back then didn't have cameras. At least, not the ones I could afford.

After having a wonderful lunch, we knew it was time to head back down. Mill Creek Canyon isn't exactly the kind of place you want to be after dark. Bears and mountain lions prowl the paths, and it's heavily populated with deer and elk. Occasionally a lone moose saunters by, and that's a ton of animal that you don't want to mess with, especially if it's a cow with or calf. More people are killed in Alaska than by any other wildlife combined up there, just to give you an idea of the danger level with those beasts.

We were almost half way back down when I heard something moving in the trees on the trail above me. Holding onto my youngest daughter, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A sudden snap of a twig, and then the slight movement of gray and white mule deer drew my attention. He was large, weighing close to 500 pounds if I had to gas. His antlers were massive, and still covered in pre-rut velvet. He was simply beautiful.

But all of a sudden, he turned his head to look behind him. In a flash, he bolted from the trail and was out of sight in the blink of an eye. Mere moments later, we saw why. Now, up until this particular moment, I had never seen a mountain lion in person outside the zoo. They don't really look that big in pictures or on TV, and being stuck in a cage doesn't afford them the room they need to grow to their fullest potential. In this case, though, I was wishing that I was at the zoo.

This particular cat was massive. His long, sleek body moved silently through the brush, carefully stalking the deer that had just bounded away. I stood transfixed, having heard stories about mountain lions that have stolen children from right under their parents' noses. I didn't want my girls to be a statistic.

I've never felt more afraid than the few heartbeats that cat held my gaze. It was as though he was looking right into my soul and contemplating his next move. Then I watched him freeze and drop low to the ground, having spun around a face what was heading his way.

Now, as I said before, TV doesn't do the mere presence of a mountain lion in the wild, just as. Out of nowhere, he hissed, spat like a house cat does, and then quickly turned to run away. My heart was racing in my throat, as it was literally the most terrifying encounter I had had. I found myself wondering what on earth could scare such a large predator?

However, I didn't have to wait long to find out. The trees shook as they were angrily shoved aside. A foul odor like someone that hasn't ever taken a bath before and then spent their days playing at the dump reached my nose, and it made my eyes water. It was awful. It brought back the memory of my tent getting peed on, and I then swallowed the lump of fear that was forming in my throat.

My mouth went dry as a massive black shadow broke through the brush to stand on the open trail right above me. It was a Sasquatch. He, and yes, it was painfully obvious what gender he was, turned to face me.

Flight, fight, or freeze, right? Yeah, I froze. Here was this creature almost nine feet tall, staring down at us from the fifteen-foot height difference between the trail that we were on, and the one that he was on. I broke out in a cold sweat, and my body began to tremble violently. There was nothing for it. If he wanted us dead, that would be it.

Instead, though, he grunted and then broke a tree, sending it down the hill at us. I was beyond terrified, and my youngest literally wet herself. My heart was racing, waiting to see what his next move would be. My breath was caught in my throat as his gaze locked firmly to mine, holding me captive.

His eyes were stunning though, large and almost bright amber, flecked with little hints of gold here and there. Aside from his intimidating presence, he was truly a sight to behold, and he was out in the afternoon light. Something that most Bigfoot don't typically do. At this point he snorted and then continued on the trail, unsure if it was the deer or the mountain lion that he was after.

The mountain lion had taken off rather quickly, so I was going to assume it wasn't the cat. Feeling the blood flowing back to my legs, I told my kids to lay low, and I would be right back. They nodded shakily and ducked into the closest bush. After I made sure they were well hidden, I raced back up the trail to get a look at the footprints, if there were any. Boy were there.

Now I wear a size eight and a half wide in women's, and sometimes a solid nine wide. I have big feet. Putting my feet next to that one though, I look like I had the feet of a toddler. The print was almost two feet long and roughly a foot wide. It had flat feet with almost no arch showing it all, but there was something unusual.

There was nothing out of the ordinary on the left foot, but the right one only had four toes. The pinky toe was missing. The mud had depressed almost two inches from the sheer weight of them, so it wasn't a case of it just being stunted. It just wasn't there. I was desperately wishing I had my small digital camera, as I would have loved to at least gotten some size reference photos.

So, deciding that I would brave the canyon at night, I quickly collected my girls and rushed them back down the mountain to our car. A light pattering of rain had begun, and I knew I was racing against a storm. Getting the kids home, I called in my neighbor to watch them while I drove back up. The rain was falling faster now, but I was beyond caring. I wanted to get a picture of the print. I was literally racing against the clock and against the rain as it fell heavy in the mountain.

By the time I got to where the trail began, it was falling in bucket falls, so I hurried to get out of my car, but I was stopped by a park ranger. I'm sorry ma'am, I can't let you go up on any of those trails," he said. His voice, as dour as the weather. Is the trail too unstable, I asked?

No, ma'am, something big mauled a black bear. We think it was a bull moose," he answered, until we figure out the details we aren't letting anyone up the trails. Are you sure it was a moose?" I asked, because I saw something.

It is the opinion of the US forestry that the animal that mauled the blackbearer was most likely a moose. Any speculation beyond that statement will not be heard," he replied. Offering the man a small smile, I understood. He'd seen the Sasquatch 2, or the Prince at the very least, though was told by his superiors that they wouldn't hear of that.

It was heartbreaking to know that the men and women over him were so closed-minded that they wouldn't even entertain the idea that it was anything other than just a moose. Notting my head, I got back in my car and drove back down the mountain. I was soaked from the downpour, but I wasn't the only one to know what really happened to the bear that day, though I do admit that I would have thought the mountain lion would have been the target.

I hadn't seen a bear, but then black bears are usually more shy. They're also not as fast, as mountain lions. It was something that I will never forget. I've driven up the mountain several times over the last few years, but I've never seen or heard anything about the nine-toed Sasquatch. I find myself wondering if he is still alive and just moved on, or if he's met his end somehow. I suppose. I'll never know.

Before I continue, please consider showing your support by subscribing, sharing, and giving the podcast a positive review. You can also visit me on Patreon, buy me a coffee or PayPal and make a donation, or become a member, starting at just a dollar a month. You can even join my Patreon membership for free and get access to all of my future updates. And of course, just listening to the show is the best support of all, and I'm grateful to have you here.

Now, please stay tuned, and I'll be right back after these brief messages. Our next experience of the night comes to us from Joshua, and Joshua's story is called Lost Time Experience.

I am very grateful that I stumbled upon your podcast. I started listening to your newer episodes a few weeks ago and then decided to just go all the way back to episode 1 and go from there. I am currently on season 1, episode 10. Missing time. Experiences and personal stories.

While listening to this episode, an experience that I had as a younger teenager that I hadn't thought about in a very long time surfaced. I apologize that I'm about six years late talking about this topic, but I felt compelled to share this unexplained experience with all of you. My experience took place on a summer's evening, and if I had to guess, it was 1994, and I was about 13 years old.

My three older sisters and I were latchkey kids that were often left without supervision. We grew up in a small town in Northwestern New Jersey living with our father. Our parents were divorced and our father worked a lot of hours, partying and gambling the rest of the time. So he was seldom home. My two oldest sisters, who are much older than me, had since moved out to live on their own, leaving me and my sister Marie alone at home the majority of the time.

A good percentage of the neighborhood kids all knew each other and hung out. We would do many fun things such as bike riding, swimming, basketball, rollerblading, playing manhunt, etc. My bike was a crappy rusty hand-me-down from one of my older sisters. It was embarrassing riding a girl's bike, but you have to use what you've got coming from a blue collar working-class family with little extra money laying around.

My friend Jan's older brother recently graduated from high school and was selling his BMX bike for $50 because he was going to college in the fall. It was a gorgeous bike, sick rims, jet black, and pegs. Let me tell you that I knew I was going to do everything possible to get that bike. So I approached my father the next time he came home and pleaded my case for this bike. I was a quiet kid and quite intimidated by my father, but I somehow mustered up the courage to ask him for money.

Now, I don't know if he just won a big gambling bat or if the stars aligned for me, but he agreed to buy me the bike, telling me that it would be my Christmas and birthday present combined. I was okay with that since he often didn't buy his presents anyway. I took the fifty bucks that same day, and picked up my new-to-me bike. I was in love.

A few days later, after a long day of bike riding with the neighborhood friends, I decided to go home and eat something and relax before going back out that night to meet my friends to hang out, and probably to play manhunt. It was still light out, but starting to get darker, and I started riding my bike toward my house at a pretty fast pace. Approximately five houses down from mine, I hit something on the road that caused me to launch off of my bike seat and over my handlebars.

At that point, it felt like time was slowing down as I was looking at the pavement that I was about to face plant on. I distinctly remember thinking, this is bad, this is really bad, I'm gonna get hurt. Now, the next memory I have after launching in the air is me coming too in my dining room standing up with my hand gently holding onto the back of a dining room chair, and I was looking out the window to our carport.

It was now dark out, but there was enough light from the moon that I could clearly see my beautiful bike propped nicely against a pillar in the carport, right in my line of sight. I remember feeling puzzled and thinking, how the hell did I get here? I was frightened, but actually I felt safe.

I remembered being launched in the air and going over my handlebars and thinking that I was going to be hurt badly, but I had no recollection of hitting the pavement, getting to my house or entering my house, or even making my way to the dining room. If I had to guess, I had blacked out for approximately two or three hours.

I examined myself and found no evidence of injury. My clothes had no marks, holes, blood, or any evidence of injury. I felt no pain, had no bruises, lumps on my head, or even scrapes or cuts on my body. The dining room light was the only light on in the dark house. I searched around my house, but neither Marie nor my father were home. I then went outside and examined my bike, and I found no marks, no dance, or any evidence of any accident.

I then grabbed some food and went back out and found the neighborhood friends, but I never shared this with anyone. I hadn't really thought about it in a long time, until I listened to this episode. I don't know what occurred during that missing time. Thinking about it now as an adult, I feel I was protected from injury by something good. I was being watched over.

When I was going over my handlebars, I just knew that I was going to be badly injured when I hit the pavement. There's no way that I would have gotten away from this with no injury. But I walked away unscathed. There are other instances too in my lifetime where I believe I should be dead, but was saved by something good. I want to believe that I was saved to help people in this world, so that's what I try to do now. I'm not perfect and I do fall short, but I try my best to do the right thing.

I have to say it's nice to have an arena where I can share the many strange occurrences that have happened to me. Many people in my family have also had paranormal experiences which I hope to share, in future, correspondences. Thank you for what you do.

Our next fascinating experience comes to us from Bruce, and Bruce's story is called, Vestman in the Badlands. Bruce says,

The stories that your listeners share are enjoyable, entertaining, and thought-provoking, especially while on long car rides. My youngest daughter, who is 17, is especially a big fan of the Bigfoot sighting stories. My family is not new to the paranormal. We have moved often due to my job and have found ourselves in more than a couple of haunted houses.

In fact, we believe that orbs moved along with us on a relocation from Indiana to Tennessee. Two of my daughters at the time of unpacking witnessed orbs fly out of a moving box, circle the room, and then disappear into the walls of the bedroom that they were sharing. Many a dinner conversation in our family has evolved into the strange goings-on we've experienced in the many different homes we have owned or occupied.

However, this is not the story I want to share with you in this first writing to your show. This story happened with my youngest two children while on a camping trip out west during the summer of 2020. At the time, my two youngest daughters were 14 and 16, the youngest I will call Cecilia, and the older I will call Stella.

On our way out to Glacier National Park from Tennessee, we stopped at Badlands National Park for a couple of days to do some hiking and take in the otherworldly landscape. On the first night of our stay near the Badlands, we had finished dinner and were enjoying a campfire when we realized it was getting late. We were admiring the stars in the Milky Way given the clear night and the lack of light pollution.

The girls then asked about getting further away from the campground so that we could really see the night sky, and my wife agreed to clean up the dishes while we had daddy and daughter time. On foot, we exited the campground and started down a dirt road that paralleled the National Park. It was extremely dark, but the two headlamps we had brought with us kept us on track while walking down the road.

We walked for about ten minutes or so until we could no longer see the lights from the campground. We then stopped, looked at the sky, and marveled at what you could see when you were away from all the man-made lights. Before we turned off the headlamps that my daughters were wearing, we looked further down the road and didn't see anything other than grassland, cliffs, and a few trees. There were no houses, no lights, and no noise. We truly felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.

We turned off the headlamps and saw shooting stars, satellites flying overhead, and the second best view of the Milky Way the three of us had seen during our many camping trips together. We stood in complete darkness for probably ten minutes. I then suggested that we should head back to see if Mom needed any help shutting the camp down for the night.

Cecilia, the youngest, turned on her headlamp and first looked down the road in the direction we were initially traveling. At this point, she grabbed my shirt and said, Dad, what is that? By that time, my other daughter's Stella was trying to get her headlamp switched on, but was not having much luck.

I heard a bit of a whimper from her as she was now excitedly telling me that her headlamp isn't working, and she's asking what the green glowing thing is, far down the road. Now I was looking in the direction that my youngest daughter was pointing in and finally realized what we were looking at. Some 100 yards down the road, there appeared to be something person-like, wearing a neon green reflective safety vest. I immediately told the girls that we should get going and head back to the campground.

At this point, we are now walking briskly and kind of nervously joking around about where Vestman had come from. I couldn't help myself, but after a couple of minutes, I told Cecilia with the only functioning headlamp to turn around and look back down the road from where we came.

We all stared in disbelief when we now see that Vestman was only about 50 yards behind us, clearly much closer than he was before, but given the single headlamp all we could really see was the reflective strips on the vast, but we all knew that he had covered a lot more ground than we had in the past two minutes.

Quite frankly, I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the situation, given that I was still a distance away from the campground. It seemed as though when we stopped, he stopped as well. He did not appear to be moving, but only staring in our direction. We did not hear any footsteps or noises coming from behind us. All we could hear was our own excited and nervous breathing.

We hastened our pace a bit to make it back to the road the campground was on. We then walked another couple of minutes and stopped to look behind us again. At this point, we now see that Vestman is only about 30 yards behind us. It was definitely a shorter, stockier built man wearing a safety vest. It looked like he was wearing sunglasses or dark goggles, but given the lack of light, it was only possible to make out the silhouette of the darkened eyes and the neon colored safety vest.

We started into a jog to get back to the main road as fast as possible. A couple of minutes into our now jog, we see the street light from the main road, and the campground was just on the other side of this road. Once we made it to the safety of the street light, we all looked behind us. But there was no sign of Vestman. I even took my daughter's headlamp and walked back down the road the way we came to see if I could see him walking back down the road. But there was nothing.

Nothing in this vast open area of South Dakota. We made it back to the campsite still a bit out of breath from our unplanned late night jog. My wife came out of the trailer and asked why we were huffing and puffing and why we had been gone for so long. We told her about Vestman and insisted that we had only been gone for maybe 35 minutes. She shrugged and scoffed a bit in forming us that we had actually been gone for well over an hour and that the girls needed to get ready for bed.

Now in all your shows, I've heard listeners talk about Hatman, but never Vestman. I'm not sure what we saw that night, but it covered ground quickly and silently, and then it just seemingly disappeared into the ethos. Our best guess continues to be that a deceased highway or construction worker shows up on this empty stretch of road.

My daughters and I still enjoy stargazing, but we are always sure to carry headlamps as well as my 45. Thank you for the forum to share the strange and creepy and keep up the good work. Stay safe. Bruce.

Our next experience of the night comes to us from Cameron. And Cameron's experience is called don't take bones.

Hi, Nick. I've been following your podcast for about two weeks now, and I'm almost 150 episodes in. It's great to see such a cultivated community of those willing to talk about their experiences, and I personally was motivated to write by one of your podcasts I just listened to, which reminded me of a similar ominous clearing in the middle of a forest.

Roughly 15 or 16 years ago when I was 12 or 13, I was active in the Boy Scouts in my community. My troop would do one yearly trip to the Covira Scout Ranch. This was a ranch or property previously owned by Native Americans that spans more than 3,000 acres of wooded, rugged, sprawling solitude in the Midwest. We would camp there for nearly a week and work on our badges while cooking all food over a fire using tin foil and even fishing.

When we had free time, myself and a couple of friends left to go hiking throughout the expansive 3,000 acres of heavily wooded area, so long as we kept the trails already made. The entire ranch encompasses beautiful rolling hills that are massively forested, around a singular, giant lake. Needless to say, we strayed from this path many times over the week we were there, but we made sure to mark the trees indicating the direction we had already been.

When we neared day six of our outing, my friends and I wanted to go as far as we could, ignoring the previously marked trees that we had followed, and we went completely off the trail. As I said in the beginning of this story, we came across a clearing in the middle of this heavily forested Native American campground. It was a near perfect 100 meter circle of grass.

But we noticed something more interesting than just a clearing in the middle of the forest. We saw stones stacked throughout the middle of this clearing, and we decided to take a look. There were several stones sticking out of the ground half-buried as though they had been here for decades, but as 13-year-olds we saw this as an adventure. We approached the middle of the clearing and explored between those strategically placed stones before I noticed one particular stack of half-buried stones.

There were three stones, two were roughly two feet apart, and the third flanked them. A fourth stone laid across the three, creating a sort of cubby, where a one foot wide by five inch gap existed between the ground. I immediately thought of the 2001 movie, The Mummy Returns, and I reached my hand into this gap of placed stones.

I pretended to have my hand eaten as a bad joke, and no one fell for it, of course, but I did feel something slender, smooth, and unnatural. Naturally, I grabbed it and pulled it from the small rock cubby. It was an incredibly long, 9-10-inch, picked-clean bone. As a 13-year-old, I must not have connected the dots and thought that it was just a simple animal bone, and I took it as a prize, or souvenir.

We finished our last day, and I returned home a hundred miles away, and set the bone I kept on my dresser as some sort of trophy. I fell asleep that night in my bunk bed. I slept on the bottom bed. The upper bed was vacant, as my sisters slept in a room next to me, and my brother slept in the basement, now that he was old enough. I still had not conquered my fear of the dark, and a small night light illuminated my room, as I slept.

After I fell asleep, which felt like a second, I awoke in a room I was not familiar with. As I was still waking up, I was terrified. I was in a room I didn't know, and I had no idea how I got there. After five minutes of being terrified, I realized I had somehow sleepwalked into my sister's room, and awoke in the middle of her floor. I had never sleepwalked before, so this was terrifying, but I made my way back to my room, and I slept until the night was over.

After a regular day, night came once again after my first ever sleepwalking stunt, but this time I awoke in my own bed, my nightlight dimly illuminating my room, and I found myself unable to move. This was like sleep paralysis, but I remember seeing the bone that I took sitting calmly on my dresser across from me. It was then that I was filled with terror.

I watched as a shadow moved across my bedroom wall. The shadow was thin, humanoid, and pitch dark. I could see long hair flowing behind the shadow as it moved, as if it were submerged in water, and it glided. Words cannot describe the amount of fear I felt, and I am convinced this fear is what prevented me from calling out for my parents, or moving a finger.

As the shadow moved across my wall, I noticed it shrink the closer it moved to the bone until it disappeared completely. I am convinced that this was not sleep paralysis because I remained awake for a solid fifteen minutes, unable to move from pure fear, even after the shadow had disappeared. After I was convinced it was finally over, I could move. No prayer, no internal monologue. The fear had just finally subsided.

I left my room and slept in the living room until my father woke me and asked me what was wrong. I described to him exactly what happened and he entered my room to investigate. He saw the bone I had taken and interrogated me about it. Where did you get this? How long have you had this? Etc.

I told him the truth. Finally my father said that we must take this back immediately. And so we did. That day my father excused me from school so we could make the one and a half hour drive back to Kuavera Scout Ranch, retrace our steps through our previously marked hiking trails, and return the bone to where I found it.

I have never had sleep paralysis. If this was sleep paralysis, it was a miracle, because I had never had it before, and I have never had it since. It happened only once, when I stole a bone from what I presume was a burial site. I am 28 years old, and this wonderful community has sparked me to share my story, and I thank you, Nick. The moral of my story. Don't. Take bones.

This next experience comes to us from Toby, and Toby's story is called, The Day that I Saw Baphomet, or maybe even Satan himself. Toby says, I've been a fan of your podcast for almost three years now, and I love listening while I clean, crochet, or on my way to work. This first story is the time I saw something.

I believe that it was a demon or something similar, but who really knows? I do want to preface this story by explaining that after this experience, I told my grandmother, whom I lived with at the time, what I'm about to tell you. Mind you that she is a very devout Christian and doesn't usually believe in things like the paranormal, but what I told her made her prey every night, and salt the entire house, the day after.

Back in 2020, I lived in a small town just outside of Rochester, Massachusetts. This was one of the darkest moments in my life, and I was struggling a lot mentally, and I even went to an outpatient mental institution soon after. Before I start my story, though, let me draw out the layout of the apartment my grandparents and I lived in, as it's important to the story.

When you open the front door, you step into a small kitchen. To your left, there's my grandparents' bedroom door, and straight ahead, there's a threshold leading to the dining room. Once in the dining room, the bathroom door is immediately to your right, and next to it, my dad's bedroom at the time. Straight ahead from the dining room threshold is the living room, which is the final room.

As you enter the living room, you see the wicker couch I used to sleep on, which faces both thresholds. This layout allows you to see straight through every room from the couch. The house has an incline toward the living room, meaning that if you place a ball in the kitchen, it would easily roll straight to the living room and hit the couch where I sleep.

The night that my experience happened, I was the only one awake, so I was drawing while lying down on my couch and watching TV on a low volume, so as not to wake anyone else in the house. Around three or four in the morning, I had the weird sense to look up, but at the same time, I felt my heart racing at the thought of it, as if I shouldn't. But, lo and behold, my sleep deprived 17-year-old brain decided to do so.

When I did, I was met with the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. In the threshold between the kitchen and dining room, equally between the doorways of my dad's room and the bathroom, was a tall, shrouded black figure. It looked as if it was made of smoke from a house fire, but the thing that stood out the most, which most people don't believe when I tell this story, is the head that I saw.

It was semi-transparent like the body, but it had shape to it, the shape of a goat's skull, and it was staring at me. I froze with my eyes fixed on this thing. I could feel my heart beating faster and faster as I silently begged myself to wake up, hoping I was in some kind of dream or nightmare, but this thing held my gaze.

The holes where its eyes would have been were boring into my soul as I stayed there motionless, wanting to disappear and sink into the couch to escape its darkness. After what seemed like an eternity, the sun started to rise, and as the light started to melt into the apartment, the being slowly turned and walked away out of eyeshot into the kitchen.

As soon as it broke the stare it held on me, I was sent into a hyperventilating fit, the adrenaline and fight-or-flight responses leaving my body and my emotions rushing in all at once. I didn't dare move to go cry to my grandmother, fearing that it was still lurking around in the shadows.

But, that isn't the part that makes me nauseous at the very thought. What happened in the morning, after I had woken from a short, fear-filled sleep, was this. When I woke up the next morning, I nearly forgot the whole experience, brushing it off as a bad dream or sleep paralysis, and I made my way to the bathroom. I did my business and opened the door, but on the way out, my foot kicked something.

Here is where I should mention that when you walk out of the bathroom, you face the wall part of the threshold, and on the right side of the wall is a hutch that holds my grandmother's collective bells and nutcrackers, one of which I had painted when I was younger. They're all extremely heavy and hard to knock down, but as I knelt down to pick up what I had kicked, my stomach dropped, and the rush of saliva filled my mouth as I realized what I was holding.

It was the head of my nutcracker. The sticker eyes were peeled off and nowhere to be found, and the body was still standing on the top of the hutch where it had always been. However, what puzzles me about this is the fact that, number one, the nutcracker couldn't have fallen to knock the head off because the body was still standing and it would have made a loud noise if it had fallen.

Number two, only the head was off and the eyes were gone into thin air. And three, the most terrifying aspect was the incline of the house is set in a way where if for some reason it did fall, the head would have rolled down the incline toward the living room, not up toward the bathroom. Not to mention, I didn't kick it when I went into the bathroom. It was only when I came out, which means it would have been placed there.

At this point, I ran into my grandmother's room and told her the story, and I've never seen her face go as pale as it did then. She grabbed my hand and brought me to the kitchen to help her salt the house, and later set a prayer over me, as well as the house. After that, I never saw the creature again, and I'm glad. I don't know how to debunk or justify what I saw, but if it was a weird coincidence or sleep paralysis, nothing paranormal has scared me more. Then this night,

This next experience comes to us from D, and D's experience is called the monastery. D says, I want to start by saying thank you for providing a safe, judgment-free platform for like-minded individuals to come to listen and discuss our experiences. It means a lot that you read the experiences without poking fun at the individual that sent them in.

I'd like to give some background about myself to show that I'm just a normal guy, like everyone else. On my father's side, my grandparents were Italian immigrants that arrived at Ellis Island by boat in the early 1900s. My mother's family was from a well-known river city on the banks of the Ohio River.

I am in my mid-forties, married to an amazing young woman. I have a daughter, a job, two cars, the usual. Except that I am the seventh son of the seventh son, and I've been told by my mother that my father was born with a veil over his face. He passed away several years ago, so I cannot confirm.

Having been born in the late 1920s, he was of an older generation and didn't have much time or belief in anything other than working. I'd love to say that I don't put much stock in these old world superstitions, but my entire life I have been plagued with events that I cannot explain.

For one, I have always felt different, like I don't quite fit in, despite being close to friends and my immediate family members. I have been able to see or feel what most other people cannot. I have always been extremely empathetic, even when these emotions are not being displayed outwardly.

Sometimes, quite often actually, at the end of the day I feel drained, and I believe it's because of this. I would like to say that I am sensitive, but I have no idea how to use it. It comes and goes. I'm not even sure that I'd like to develop it, and sometimes, I scare myself. The story that I would like to share with you this time happened when I was in my early twenties, around the year 1999, or 2000.

It was a normal Saturday evening, and my group of friends and I set out to have a small party. My friend Matt was dating a woman named Heather. Heather had two sisters and a cousin that we hung out with. The name of the older sister escapes me these days, but the younger sister was Laurie.

The eldest of the three had just purchased an extremely large building that she was planning to turn into a bed and breakfast, and this was going to be the site of our party. It was beautiful, old, worn, rustic, charming, and I'd find out later, terrifying.

When I arrived, I immediately noticed the craftsmanship. It was a brick building, three stories, and beautiful woodwork on various parts of the house. The elaborate woodwork carried throughout the interior, with hardwood floors that stretched as far as you could see. This place was massive.

I also noticed that when I crossed the threshold from out to end, I immediately started to feel off. That's what I call it, when things are happening. I felt off, or things felt off. One of my friends in the group, Jason, knew about my quote-on-quote secret power, and so not to freak anyone out, I didn't say anything.

Jason was a practicing shaman at the time, and he and I had several discussions on the topic, since he had been my friend, since we were in the second grade. Anyway, when I walked in, there was a smell. It was odd, something that I had smelled before, but I couldn't quite place it.

It took me a few moments to try to figure the smell out. Was it smoke? Burning? Wood. The smell was like an old fire pit that had been put out and left to the elements. No one mentioned the smell, so I left it alone. The beauty continued as we were taken on the tour. There were what felt like ten to twelve rooms on every floor. It was as if the building had been broken up into several smaller living spaces.

A living area and a bathroom, and the kitchen and bathrooms were communal. All of them were complete with working burning fireplaces. I remember trying to tell myself, maybe this is where the smell is coming from. Well, we went to the second floor where it was more of the same style of living situations, but I still couldn't put my finger on the smell that seemed to be getting stronger, or what was giving me the off feeling.

On the way up to the third floor, on the stairs, Lori was explaining some of the history of the building, and said that the building had been used in the past as a monastery for a local church that was close. And this is where everything changed. The very same building that had been lit by fires that were burning in fireplaces and lamps in random spots in the family's living quarters

had fallen into darkness. The same space that had been filled with the constant chatter and laughter from the family and my group of friends was now totally silent, other than Laurie speaking at random times about things that she could recall of the history of the building. There were no sounds, no air movement, nothing.

Looking back on it now, I should have found it odd that the sounds from the floors below never traveled up the staircase to find our ears. It was almost as if, once we landed on the third floor, we were separated from the rest of the house. Now the first room at the top of the stairs was finished and looked like a normal, modern-style bedroom. It had been freshly remodeled and painted, but no lights.

The rest of the third floor was dark, and when I say dark, I mean the only light was the light coming through the windows from the night sky outside. However, it was still darker than usual, and the reason was crystal clear. The walls were made of ship lap, and they were all covered in black soot. The place was charred by a fire that had happened decades prior to our arrival. The floors, the ceilings, the walls. All black.

The silence at this point had become deafening and others in the group would talk to break up the uncomfortable silence. I remember taking my hand and wiping the black from the wall and seeing it transfer from the wall to my hand. This was the smell that I couldn't identify upon entering the building. I wasn't expecting to smell the remnants of the fire.

Laurie explained that the fire happened years ago, and it had been contained to the third floor, however she also could not recall hearing that there were any deaths related to it. She then went on to explain that her sister and brother-in-law were planning on remodeling the third floor first, then working their way down the floors with the goal of making this a bed and breakfast. This explained the newer room at the top of the stairs.

As we were walking down the hallway continuing the tour, I started to feel off again. This time it was more intense. It was close. I was searching my brain for the feeling. Did it feel heavy? No, that wasn't it. Was it the darkness? Nope. Loss? That wasn't it either. Then a single word. Hopeless. That was it. Hopelessness.

That feeling you get when no matter what you do, the world just isn't cooperating with you that day. It was the feeling that if something could go wrong, it was going to. The feeling that you have when life is so bad that you would rather not come out from under the covers. It was overwhelming.

This is when I could feel someone looking at me from the third floor room to my left as we passed the doorway. I remember the room because it was directly across from a dumb waiter that had long since been decommissioned. I whipped my head around to the left where there was some slight light barely visible in that room. The light was coming in from a stained glass window on the far side of the room, and there was a silhouette of a person's head in the window.

I could tell the person was inside of the room for two reasons. One, the shadow was in front of the glass and not coming through it. And two, the obvious reason, it was the third floor. And yes, later I checked, and there was no fire escape on that side of the building.

The figure must have noticed that I could see it, and it quickly docked. Now, having been in scenarios like this in the past, I knew that this wasn't a physical person. I knew that it was a shadow figure. I could feel it. I was a little shocked, and I was already scared. I didn't want to say a word about this, as I wasn't trying to scare anyone else.

Instead, I was thinking, is that what I had been feeling this entire time? I couldn't help but wonder what this entity had gone through to radiate such hopelessness. I didn't get the impression that it was one of the people that lived there previously. I can't explain how I know that. I just do. I did not go into that room with everyone else. Instead, I pretended to be interested in the dumb waiter that we had already inspected.

Once the tour was over, we all decided to hang out in the room that had been remodeled. After about an hour or so, I told Jason that I was weirded out, and I wanted to leave. He assured me that there was nothing to worry about, and that he hadn't seen or felt anything.

Some of the group went to other rooms downstairs, retiring for the evening with their boyfriend or girlfriend. This included Laurie that had shown us around earlier. We hung out for several more hours in the remodeled room, but my anxiety continued to grow, and by this time the group that remained knew what was going on. I even explained to them the figure's head that I saw duck in the window.

It eventually got to a point where I was insistent on leaving, and I clearly was not having a good time. Unfortunately, though, I didn't drive, and no one else was willing to leave at that moment. Somewhere around 2am, Jason decided that he had had enough of me being afraid, and told me that he would show me that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Part of the group got up and walked into that room, and a few remained behind. We walked into the room with the stained glass window. Jason reached up in the center of the room where his hand met the light. He then grabbed the chain, and clicked it on. Nick, when I shot my eyes, I can still see that room today.

It was the same as the other rooms, charged ship-lap, black, and smelled of smoke. It was much denser in this room. I felt that this is where the fire originated from. Did I know that? Absolutely not, but I could feel it. I could almost feel the residual heat and panic, perhaps my own. When the light popped on, it illuminated a blue mattress leaning on the wall opposite the door.

There was a green blanket that was rolled into a ball lying near the mattress and the light that was hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room. Although the nose two items, the room was completely empty. The color of these items will come into play later.

For the moment it appeared Jason was right, there was nothing to be afraid of, except that I was still frightened. Jason could tell, but I didn't say anything other than, I guess you're right, and I then walked out of the room. The night continued into the morning, but I did eventually catch a ride home around 4.30 a.m. or 5 a.m. with a friend that was leaving. Everyone else stayed the night.

The following weekend, some of this same group and I were eating at a local restaurant, and we were all right in the middle of making fun of me for leaving, when Laurie happened to walk in. She joined us, and the table went right back to our conversation, and the good-natured ribbing that was going on. She was curious why I laughed, and this is how the conversation went. Laurie asked,

So you left? How come? I then explained to Laurie what was going on prior to her leaving the party, and then I said, But Jason took me in the room, turned on the light, and showed me that there was nothing in there. Laurie shaking her head then said, Wait, what?

So I said, yeah, I know, I was being dumb. Laurie then said, D, there isn't any electricity on the third floor. I then laughed and told her to shut up. But with a straight face, Laurie said, I'm serious.

Nick, the entire table, fell silent. Laurie was visibly shaking, and let's just say that Jason instantly believed me. He looked me right in the eye and apologized for having me go into that room. Everything came together at that moment like the ending of a mystery movie.

There were no lights on at all that night on the third floor, nowhere but in that room, and at that single moment. The light had to have come on because I could see the colors of the items scattered on the floor. I could see the bulb swinging from the cord that was attached to the ceiling that Jason had just clicked on. The thought of that room and what was potentially in it have haunted me for over twenty years. I never went back after this incident.

Nowadays, that group has all gotten older, gained families, and lost touch. And sadly, Laurie has passed away since then. Jason and I are the only two that remain close to this day, but not as close as I'd like. We speak twice a week or so for hours on end, and occasionally, this story makes its way to the topic of discussion. I've seen other oddities and unexplainable things.

But none left me feeling like this experience. Thanks for reading. D.

Our next experience of the night comes to us from Shelby, and Shelby's experience is called UFO Up Close and Dover Lights. Shelby says, Hello, I enjoy this podcast and hearing what everyone else has experienced. It's nice to know there are many others out there who have seen something similar to what I wanted to share with you today. My first story is probably the most memorable being that two of my friends were with me and saw what I did.

Living in rural Iowa, you tend to see or experience at least one weird thing that can't always be explained away, and that is exactly what happened here. I was around 9 years old, and the very small town I lived in was literally a road with around 10 houses on it, and then cornfields.

A few houses down, I was staying the night with my friend and her sister, and we could pretty much roam around freely until dark, so of course that's the one thing we wanted to do. So we waited until her parents were asleep, and we snuck out. It had to have been around two or three a.m., and we decided to quietly jump around on the trampoline. There was nothing out of the normal until the sister screamed, and we followed her gaze.

Ostrok and Frozen in place, we saw a saucer shaped UFO touching the top of their tree as it hovered almost silently following the alleyway. The branches lightly scraped against the dark metal craft as it slowly rotated around, and a low soft hum could be heard. There was a row of red lights spaced out evenly all around it, close to the bottom, and it was getting closer and closer to the ground, looking like it was about to land.

My friends took off running inside, and I climbed down from the trampoline, and I just stared at it. I thought to myself, I will never see anything like this again, so I stayed as it descended further, coming at me. I felt that whatever this was had to be just as curious as me right now, and I would have felt fear if it was harmful.

It was like I was in the days because I should have been afraid and wasn't until my friend yelled out the door frantically to me and I realized I should probably not let it get above me. Before running inside, I smiled and it started to ascend slowly after we left.

It didn't shoot away like we thought it would, but rather it scoped out the rest of the town before rising up and out of sight. Scared, we crouched by a window afraid that it would land, but we never saw the craft again. After that, I was afraid for a while, but I've seen other UFOs and unexplained things, and I'm more happy than scared now when I see them.

The odd thing about this encounter is that the other two saw different colored lights on it. One saw green, and another saw multicolored. We argued that the others were wrong and ourselves to be right, but that's how vivid this sighting was for all of us. It's weird that we saw almost the same thing, so why we saw different colored lights, I don't know, but I think that we saw a reflection of ourselves that night.

Later on in life, I could see Auras and in my younger years I was red and my friends were green and multicolored. That's just a guess though, so as to why I couldn't tell you. If anyone has similar experiences, I'd love to connect and talk about it.

My second story is about Dover Lights, and one that I have physical evidence to show that it happened. On a trip to Arkansas to visit with family, we ended up in a little town called Dover. There are legends of this place about the light phenomenon that happens seemingly at random times.

Some say it's the spirits of miners who have lost their lives in a coal mine nearby, and the lights are their lanterns searching for a way out, or even conquistadors searching for gold, as well as being a Native American burial spot. No matter the legends behind the lights, there have been many people to witness them.

Arriving at the overlook around 7 or 8 p.m., me and my cousins stepped out, and as we walked to the edge, we could see the lights, and we were so excited. It was just becoming dark, and in the valley below, the lights flickered in different colors, as others appeared and disappeared. We mostly saw yellow, white, and orange colors, but occasionally there were a few blue ones. This by itself is amazing, but my story gets a little bit weird from here.

Others arrived to see the lights as well, and locals told us what they think it is, and how lucky I am to be out of state and to see them on my first try. I kept seeing these bright yellow flashes close to me, and my brain was too focused on the bigger ones to think much of it. I thought that it was probably just lightning bugs or something, until a girl shrieked. There's one right by her, she exclaimed a bit scared.

I noticed she pointed at me, and I watched the light fade away. It had to have been the size of my fist, so that would not be a bug. Talking with her and her friend, I found out that the other girl noticed it happened two more times right by me.

After this, there was a bright light shining on the road, and everyone became silent. We waited to see if it was headlights of a car or someone trying to prank us, but it stayed in a yellow light that appeared next to the white one. I go over to investigate, thinking that it had to be a car's spotlight or something, until I passed the trees, and I stood in the road. There were two huge orbs of light hovering about seven feet in the air.

Stunned for a second, I finally turned around, hurrying back, to afraid to get a picture of them. Honestly, I was not expecting to see the lights in front of me like that. After that, we all heard shouting coming from the woods that sounded like a native war call, and we all ran to our cars. This could not have been a prank, because it was only feet away from the lights that were basketball-sized, and I don't get scared very often, but I really was in that moment, because it could not be explained.

We watched the lights inch closer to the parking area, and when I thought to grab my phone, they disappeared. Once they were gone for a few minutes, we all emerged to talk about it. There had to have been around six others there that night. As we left, me and my cousin were talking about everything, and again, something happened.

A small orb of light appeared inside, right next to my rearview mirror, and we stopped mid-sentence. Did you see that? She asked me, already knowing that I did. Yes, that green light. But she said that she saw a blue one. We felt like something was in the car with us, but it wasn't mean or anything bad. I've even seen a green orb appear a few times in my home whenever I felt that calming presence I felt in the car that night.

I have no idea why, but I feel the lights are more than just lights. Before we continue, let's take our final break and I'll be right back after these brief messages.

Our next experience comes to us from Dean. And Dean's experience is called light outside. Hey Nick, I'd like to thank you for reading my strange phone call experience here on your show. I'm a huge fan of both the show and the community here on Paranormal Mysteries.

I have a more recent event to tell you and your listeners. I am from Southern Ontario, Canada, and this event happened in late November of 2020. I was off of work recovering from cancer treatment at the time and was lying in bed late on the evening that my sighting took place.

The time was roughly 1 or 1.30 am and I was awake, just watching some YouTube in my dark bedroom. My wife and I do not share a bedroom because we don't sleep well together. I guess I move too much and snore occasionally, and it's been this way for almost 20 years.

This night, while I was immersed in some YouTube content, I happened to notice that there was this light coming in through my window, which is located over my left shoulder, as the headboard of the bed is against the outside wall with the window in it. So, I wasn't facing the window, but this light was bright enough to capture my attention, even through the curtains.

I didn't hear any sound, so I stood up to look out and investigate. To my amazement, my entire backyard was as bright as it would be in daylight, but oddly, only my backyard was lit. Nothing was really visible beyond my fences. I tried my best to clean my neck up to see where the light was coming from, but I couldn't see a light source.

Confused, I walked out of my room and made a right turn toward the side door of my house, which doesn't have great visibility either, since my neighbor's house is only about 10 feet away from mine. Looking through the window in the side door, I didn't see any bright light. It was dark, as expected.

Since I couldn't see anything from there, I went up the small staircase leading into my kitchen and living room. When I looked out the front window of my house, this window is facing east, it was again just dark out, with the exception of the street lights. I again tried to look up to see if I could see any light source, but there was nothing, just the night sky.

Still confused, I made my way back through my house and down the short staircase and could still see light coming through my bedroom window. On the same level of the house, I own a back split style home, is our TV room. This room is in the opposite direction of the side door and is a sliding door that goes out onto my back deck. I walked into the TV room and could see that there was definitely light visible here too. I didn't think, I just walked up, opened the sliding door, walked to the edge of the deck.

and turned around 180 degrees. Facing the sliding door that I just came out of, I looked up and saw the light source that I was looking for. A single, bright white light. It wasn't moving or making any noises. I couldn't tell if it was really high up and large or very low and small.

I took a few looks around to see if any of my neighbors were out and seeing this too, but all was quiet, and the light was kind of making it difficult to see beyond my own yard. It was the same sort of effect that you get when sitting around a campfire. The darkness seems impossible to see into.

I watched this light hoping to see it change color or move or do something, but it didn't. It was just sitting there. After maybe 60 seconds, I could see it moving straight up. At least that's what it looked like. Not fast, but a slow steady pace. This was the moment I thought, I need a picture of this, so I ran back into my still open sliding door and into my room and I grabbed my phone off my nightstand.

I ran back out and it was still moving straight up, so I snapped one shot of it as it was slightly passing through some light cloud cover. I'll attach the photo or send it another way if that doesn't work. As soon as it was out of sight, I noticed something disturbing.

The sky was lit up as if the sun was soon to rise. When I looked around, I could tell that it was definitely very early morning. Not only that, but there was a light dusting of snow that had fallen. Maybe a half inch at best. This is something that is common, this time of year. The thing that freaked me out was, there were no footprints in it, except the ones I was standing in. There were no prints to and from the door, where I had just, seconds before, walked from.

I was also not cold in the least, and I was standing outside in my underwear only, and it had to have been below zero for there to be snow. I also didn't see snow falling at any time while standing there, as I was looking up and around. I didn't see a single flake fall.

I nervously walked back into my house, closed the door behind me, and made my way back to the living room window again. It was indeed morning. I believed the time was roughly before 6 a.m. I stared out that front window in total disbelief.

This entire thing only seemed to be maybe two minutes when I got out of bed to when I was looking at the morning sky. How did I lose five plus hours of time? I don't think that I was abducted or anything as far as I know, and I don't have any idea what I was even looking at. It's definitely the strangest thing to have ever happened to me. I've read things about these types of events lots of times, but I never thought that I would experience something like this, myself.

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for the outlet for us to talk about these kinds of things, because no one believes me, not even my wife. She thinks that I was either dreaming or hallucinating. I can assure you, I was not.

Our next experience of the night comes to us from Crystal, and her encounter is called Old Woman on the Beach. I'll start by saying that my entire life I've had paranormal encounters of various kinds. I could probably fill a book, but I love listening to your podcast, and I decided to share one with you for now.

About five years ago I took my dog for a drive to the beach. It was evening and starting to get dark when we arrived. The beach where I live in Australia is set up so you have the actual water and sand. Then you walk up dunes or steps to a park-like area with seats, walkways, car parking spaces, bike paths, a boardwalk, and small lookout. Across the street are holiday homes and takeaway food shops.

I arrived and parked my car and got out to take my two dogs along the path and down the steps to the beach. As I headed in that direction, an older lady caught my eye. She was perched on the railing on the boardwalk or lookout, but something about her, straight away, gave me chills.

For one, she was completely motionless and expressionless, just standing there, pressed against the rail. She was extremely generic in the sense that she had a very plain average face, short gray hair, and very much average weight and height. Her clothing also seemed out of place as she was wearing plain black slacks and a plain white shirt that was buttoned in the front.

Her clothes were extremely neat, as if they were pressed after being put on. She almost looked as if someone had asked AI to create an image of an average elderly Caucasian woman. Something just didn't seem right to me. Anyway, I put the thought away because I didn't want to judge an old lady trying to enjoy a night at the beach, and I took my dog down the dunes and onto the sand. From down on the beach, I could still see her standing up on the boardwalk.

still perched in the same position. I started walking my dog and not too much time had elapsed when my smaller dog started to go crazy. He just absolutely lost it, barking, snarling and trying to get off his lead to get at something. I tried to settle him down, and as I did, I noticed that that same woman was now standing directly behind me.

She was so close that there was probably only a few inches between our bodies. Seeing her, I knew immediately this was not a human being, at least not as we know, because there was no way anyone could have made that distance in that time, especially an old lady in the dark, on sand, and over-occasional rocks. Secondly, if my dog had seen her coming, he would have started barking as she approached, not just when she was right behind my back.

Now, when I looked at the woman, she stood still and completely expressionless, just like she had been up on the boardwalk. At this point I got my dog and headed back up the beach, but this is where the story takes another weird turn. As I got up towards the Parkland area, I saw that all the entrances to the beach in that area had now been taped off.

Apparently the local council had been doing some work on the beaches and didn't want people going down there. But those warning tapes had not been there across the entrances when I walked down there, and there's absolutely no way that they'd been out in the middle of the night putting them up. I was so confused that I even contacted the council and asked them when the tape had gone up, and of course they told me that it had been well before my trip to the beach.

Later, I contacted my ex-boyfriend, who is Korean, and he told me that I shouldn't have gone near the water, because it was Hungry Ghost Month, which is an Asian time when it's believed that the dead come back to Earth. He told me that it was very dangerous to be around water at that time, as the spirits could use it to somehow appear. He also told me that he believed that I had somehow slipped into another dimension at the moment I walked down onto the beach,

without the entrances being blocked off as they were when I came back. He said that he had heard many cases in Korea of hikers walking and finding themselves in a different dimension. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I don't walk on the beach in the dark anymore.

Now, I contacted Crystal and I asked her if she had tried to speak to this woman, and if so, what her response was. I also asked her for any additional details that she could remember about that night. And this is what Crystal had to say. Nope. I didn't say a word. I just noped out of there. She had short gray hair, but such a blank expression. I also never saw her come back up to that part of the beach that was higher up and lit up.

It was just so odd for her to appear right behind me after I had seen her not long before up on the boardwalk. It was a very dark night, and down where I was on the sand was very dark. I'd usually not mind walking the beach in the dark as I knew my way around, but I just don't do it anymore. My plan is to avoid doing so ever again in the future.

Our next experience comes to us from A and A's experience is called Strange Childhood. I've been contemplating telling my different experiences for some time now. I found your podcast while searching for something paranormal on Spotify, and I am now excited to tell my story and continue to hear others. 2003.

I remember my first paranormal experience when I was no older than eight. I often stayed the night at my aunt's house in the middle of the woods in the south. The home had been in the family for years, inhabited by many family members, some of which we didn't know about his kids. I remember the first experience I had was when I was dreaming.

In my dream, I was moving along the house, almost slithering along the plywood floor from the bedroom to the living room. As I entered the living room, I saw a rocking chair in the center of the room, and it was slowly rocking, but there was no occupant. I was about four inches from the ground at the bottom of the chair when I stopped and then looked up. The chair immediately stopped, and while no one was seen in the chair, I felt someone turn and look at me from the chair.

I relayed this to my aunt the next morning about the chair, and she told me that her grandmother had a rocking chair she often sat in in the living room, but that she had died years before I was ever born. The second experience was also in this house, and less than a year later.

I was sleeping in what used to be the original living room turned bedroom next to my cousin. I had felt uneasy going to sleep that night, but I chalked it up to feeling homesick. I remember waking up to the feeling of someone watching me, only to see what I thought was my uncle standing in the doorway.

Every light except for a small light in the kitchen was off, but the light from the kitchen dimly lit the hallway enough for me to see the outline of this figure. While the figure was black, a part of my mind could make out features of this figure. He was tall, broad, bearded, and was wearing overalls, a checkered flannel shirt, and what I can only describe as a trucker's hat.

I then called out my uncle's name, confused as to why he would be awake and dressed so late in the night. But with no response, I closed my eyes, and I went back to sleep. Later, I was awoken again to the feeling of someone watching me. But when I opened my eyes, the figure was now standing directly beside me, and it was staring me down. Even being less than two feet away, the figure was still dark with no distinct features other than what I had pictured from the doorway.

I froze. I felt like whatever this was, or whoever this was, hated me. Not just me, but truly hated children. Again, I told my family about it, and they all agreed that it was my great-grandfather who was a mean man, and actually did not like children. 2006.

My mother was renting a home in an extremely small, poor town when I was young. I felt downright scared when we got into the hallway where the three bedrooms were. My room was first on the left down the hall. My brothers was the second, and my mothers was on the right. I remember feeling like we should not be there, and that we needed to leave. I felt like there was something in that hallway, and like that entire part of the house was thick, with darkness.

Throughout the time that we lived there, I felt something watching me. Neither my mom nor my brother ever felt anything, so I kept my experiences to myself. Most children at some point feared that there was something in their closet, or even under their bed. My issue, though, was that I couldn't shake the feeling, and I was struggling to sleep at night. I just knew that if I was to get out of bed to go to my mom, whatever was watching me would grab me, or even hurt me.

Eventually, I learned to go to sleep early when I could still hear my mom and I felt safe. I had less problems since the majority of the overbearing dread was at night. That was, until whatever this was, showed itself to me in broad daylight.

I was sitting on my kitchen counter facing the hallway while talking to my younger cousin who had her back to the hallway. As I was talking to her, I saw a dark male figure walk from the bathroom that was directly across from my room, stop in the middle of the hallway, then turn to look at me, and it then walked directly into my room. It was almost like whatever this thing was wanted to show me that it was there. It wanted to confirm my fear. It wanted me, afraid.

2007. When we moved from the house with the dark figure, I was elated, but I didn't realize that I was trading one entity for two more. The two I experienced were polar opposites. The first was a maternal loving woman.

It was rumored that she was the sister of the previous owner who had died in the home. Almost daily we would catch pockets of cigarette smell or perfume throughout the house. This was in a very concentrated area of about five and a half feet from the ground. It was small things like this that happened consistently, but it was comforting since my previous interactions had been dark. This relief was short-lived though when I started feeling something incredibly sinister in the house.

Regardless of where in the house I was, I felt something hateful and evil watching me. My strongest experience with this entity was at night when I couldn't sleep because I was shaking from being so scared. I felt whatever this was, sitting just a few feet from the side of my bed, waiting like a starving animal, about to be released to a feast.

My aunt, a devout Christian, listened to my concerns, and while we never said the word aloud, we both felt that what I was experiencing had to be a demon. She anointed the room and my head with oil, and she prayed over me. She asked God to watch over me, and she cleansed the room and the house of anything that would do me harm. However, when she left the room, I was more terrified than ever.

She didn't actually fix anything. She didn't bless anything, but she made whatever this thing was. Angry. It was absolutely savage, and instead of being a few feet away from me, it was now inches from my face, and I could feel its rage rippling through my room. I lived with this fear for years in the house.

At the time, I was a typical churchgoing Christian. I prayed every day, many times a day, for strength and protection from whatever this was. I began to stand up for myself. The feeling of being prayed on, lessened, and nearly evaporated when I had my child. I brought my son home in 2011. I was terrified of being a first-time mom, and also so young.

Now, the demon entity felt nearly gone, but what we referred to lovingly as the lady was back and supercharged. Every day was strong perfume, cigarettes, voices, and things moving. She loved having a new baby in the house. It's like the new life gave her a reason to be more present. Now there's not enough time to go into detail on all the experiences with our sweet lady, but I will list the most impressive.

At one point, we warned my oldest brother when he visited that she did not like foul language. He made jokes and said that he would say whatever he wanted, because he was a grown man. The first night he slept in our house, he was awoken by someone slapping him hard across the back of the head. When I was taking a shower, someone turned the knob and opened the door slightly. I opened the curtain just in time to see the door swaying to a stop.

My favorite most vivid and last intense experience came in a dream. In this dream, I walked into our living room to find an older woman in her sixties, sitting on the back of the couch with her bare feet on the seat. Her short hair was wet from a shower, and she was wearing stonewashed jeans and a black bra. She was smoking a cigarette, and she then told me,

You already know me, so there's no need to be scared. You know I'm your friend, and I love you. I love that little baby you brought home. He's so sweet, and he has definitely made me feel young again. I'm here. I'm real, but I won't be around anymore. I'll still be here, but you won't know it."

I woke up in tears, grieving this woman we had come to know through her maternal energy and perfume. After our lady wasn't felt anymore, this demonic entity came back full force. Every negative feeling came back, and the most terrifying experience was again, during a dream.

In the dream I was walking through the now empty house and could feel it, almost like it had filled the entire home. Suddenly I heard a shaking sound that can only be described as a growl and a laugh. I felt a harsh breath on my shoulder, but when I turned there was nothing behind me. When I turned around again though, this entity showed itself and it grabbed me by my throat. It shoved me against the wall and growled with its jaw wide in my face.

I could see every detail perfectly, and I will never forget it. It was at least seven feet tall, all black except its blood red eyes, massive knurled horns, long sharp fingers, and twisted legs. I screamed at it that it had no power here, that it's my home, and that God is with me, and that this thing is nothing. It is weak and powerless against the power of God.

I began praying the Lord's prayer over and over as loud as I could, pouring my heart and soul into it. I willed God to protect me and give me strength to drive this thing out of my house. It then screamed a sound I could not and probably never will be able to describe, and it then disappeared, and I immediately felt relief like a weight had been lifted.

As I turned to leave, I heard a laugh, and the demon threw me across the room, grabbed me, began choking me, and it then asked, Do you really think your little prayer can do anything to me? Do you think you have any power against me? At this point, I felt my faith slip. I knew that I had no power, that God was not with me.

As I felt my hopelessness grow, I woke up to being soaked with sweat. I then prayed throughout the house, steeled myself against this entity, and again I told myself that I was stronger than whatever this was.

I'm unsure of the timeline, but also while living at that home with my mom, we stood outside to watch the stars. Again, we lived in a very small town with little light pollution. While stargazing, we noticed an orange light floating through the sky. We thought about how odd it was, but that it was probably just a weather balloon.

Then, two more lights joined it out of nowhere. The first light slowed, and the two lined up with it to form a perfect triangle. The three shapes then continued silently like this for a few moments. Slowed, stopped, and then started once again, and they eventually disappeared a minute or two later. Now, our closest airport was over an hour away, and there was no blinking lights that would be expected with a plane or even a helicopter.

I still don't know what those lights were, but I would love to know if someone else has had this experience and can tell me what they were.

Tonight's mysteries come to us from Amber, and this is what Amber had to say. Hello, Nick. I hail from Good Old West Michigan. I discovered your podcast at work this evening, and not only found myself hooked, but discovered an excitement at finding somewhere to tell my tales. I'd like to do three quick stories, and I will tell them in chronological order of experience.