I was studying in my bedroom when the lights went out. I lit candles in every room of the house. I got back on my bed and continued studying with whatever light I had. The drawing room’s wall was visible from my bedroom and candle was lit in the corner. Suddenly, I felt something move in the drawing room and looked up to see two human shadows higher up on the wall. They seemed to be moving back and forth. I freaked out and texted my mom to come home right then and when she did, there was no one in the drawing room. Later on, we found out that there was a father & son who lived in the house before us and had committed suicide.

My aunt was cleaning the bedroom of her vacation house in Goa, and suddenly the ceiling fan fell on the floor, almost hitting her on the head. The moment she caught her breath, and calmed down, she heard a woman’s laugh in the corridor and then footsteps running away. Apparently, the woman who owned the house before was a maniac who did black magic on people for revenge and was killed in the house by someone she had bad blood with.

My grandmother was sleeping in the room next to mine. In the middle of the night, I heard my grandmother yelling, ‘Get away from me! Leave me alone’. I panicked and ran to her room, only to find my grandmother standing in the middle of the room all alone. When asked, my grandmother just shook her head and went back to sleep. Later my help told me that many years ago when a child was growing up in this same house, a burglar had broken into her room while she was sleeping and tried to kidnap her. When she yelled for help, her grandmother came running and tried fighting off the burglar. She picked up a flower vase and hit the burglar on the head, killing him. He was buried in the backyard and no one knew about that night. Apparently, he’s been haunting the house ever since. No prizes for guessing, we moved houses.

My dad’s brother was handicapped due to an accident. He used to stay with us because he didn’t have a family of his own. When my father passed away, I started taking care of him and would help him in his daily routine. I used to take him up to the terrace every day where he would sit under the sun while I finished my chores downstairs. One day, after I came downstairs, I heard a weird foot-tapping sound coming from above. I rushed upstairs and found him having a stroke. He died suddenly, right in front of me. After that, every time I went to the terrace at night, I would see him sitting in his chair, tapping his foot.

My cousins and I were sleeping in the same room because the whole family had gotten together for a vacation. One night, while everyone was asleep, my youngest cousin woke up and started saying, ‘Grandpa, is that you? It’s so nice to see you again’. We all woke up and asked her why would she say that, to which she replied saying, ‘There’s grandpa right there, smiling at me. He’s telling me to go for a walk with him.’ We all became pale white because our grandpa passed away ten years ago and he loved going on walks. This cousin was only one when grandpa died so there was no way she could have remembered that or anything about him at all.

 My family had just moved into this new house which had three floors. We are a very religious family so we decided to bless the house. We called in a priest who was reciting prayers while the whole family was standing around him. Suddenly, we heard loud noises coming from the upper floor. It sounded like furniture was being moved and things were being thrown here and there. The whole family was in the same room downstairs so we kind of panicked. But then my father told us that maybe the movers reached a little early and started unpacking so everyone relaxed a little. We later found out that the doors were locked from outside and no one was upstairs because as soon as our prayers finished, the movers rang our bell to ask us for the keys. To this day, we don’t know what caused the commotion.

 I was in a boarding school while growing up and like every other hostel, we had a lot of horror stories about the school. But the spookiest one was about a girl who had slipped in the bathroom and died when she went alone to pee one night. Her body was found the next day. I had to use the bathroom very late one night and I didn’t want to go alone so I asked my friend to accompany me. She stood outside in the corridor while I went in. The moment I locked the door, the lights went out and I panicked and caller for her. There was no reply but as soon as I got out of the stall, I bumped into a girl and thinking it’s my friend, grabbed her arm and told her how relieved I am that she’s here. I got the shock of my life when I saw my friend standing outside when I opened in the door. The moment I saw her, the arm I was holding suddenly stopped existing and it felt like I was holding onto air. I kid you not, I almost peed my pants.

 One night, my brother and cousin were playing Xbox while I slept in the same room. They were being too rowdy so I woke up and told them to close the door so that they don’t wake up the adults. My brother walked over to the door and suddenly panicked and backed away. He told us that there is a child standing right outside the door. We didn’t believe him at first and my cousin went to check. The moment he reached the door, we heard a loud bang and then a child’s laughter echoed through the corridor. We later found out from our neighbours that before we moved in, the house belonged to a woman who killed her son because she thought he was the devil and then committed suicide.

 My friend and I were driving home very late one night when we saw a beautiful woman at the side of the road, asking for a lift. Even though we suspected foul play, we didn’t want to leave a woman stranded so late in the night. We asked her where she’s headed and she just pointed ahead. We told her to get in, all our senses still alert. We asked her multiple times where she wants to be dropped off and she kept saying, ‘just a little ahead’. After fifteen minutes or so, she asked us to stop and before getting off the car, she said, ‘It’s good you didn’t look at me the wrong way.’ Before we could react, she vanished into thin air. We were so confused that we asked around the next day and found out that a woman was murdered here by two men and whenever she sees a pair of two men going, she asks for a lift and if they try anything fishy, she murders them. No bodies have ever been found.

I was around six years old when I was cleaning my cupboard. My father and sister were watching TV in the other room. Suddenly, it felt like someone came really close to my ear and whispered my name into it. The moment I heard it, I turned out and there was no one in the room except me. I got so scared that I ran to the other room and told my father and sister. They laughed at me because they thought I was just being stupid. The moment they started laughing, I heard laughter coming from my room too like someone was mocking me. I slept in my parents’ room for the next few months.

 I rented an apartment when I was in college. My uncle, who had a job in the same city, lived with me. One night, I couldn’t sleep and kept tossing and turning. After a while, when I finally got some shut-eye, I woke up with a start, finding it very hard to breathe. The moment I opened my eyes, I saw an old lady sitting on top of me, trying to choke me. She was yelling at the top of her voice that she’s going to kill me. I couldn’t move or call out for my uncle. I started reciting prayers in my mind and after a while, it all stopped. It didn’t feel like a dream at all. I went to my uncle to check why didn’t he come to check on me because the lady was clearly very loud. To my shock, he was wide awake watching TV in his room and when I asked him if he heard anything, he told me that apart from me coming into his room, the house was dead silent. I slept in his room that night.

I was sleeping in the drawing room with my uncle and brother. I was on the divan, while my brother and uncle were on the floor. Suddenly, I felt something move around in the room. It seemed like someone is moving around very slowly and carefully. I gathered the guts to open my eyes to the horror of a figure standing over my brother and staring at him. It had a very slender appearance with long black hair and the moment it saw me looking at it, it vanished. We found out later that a young widow who lost her husband in the war used to live in this house and eventually died waiting for him.

My brother kept having nightmares for weeks to the point where he didn’t want to sleep in his bed anymore. They were recurring dreams of an old woman who would always be shrouded in shadow and try get at my brother. One night I decided to sleep in that bed and had one of the freakiest dreams I’ve ever had, the woman my brother had been having nightmares about slid up through the gap between the wall and the bed and was trying to grab and pull me off the bed. I woke up sweating and yelling. It was after this that my mother decided to look into it, the nightmares started a week or so after buying the mattress second hand, and my mother found out that one of the previous owners was an old woman who had apparently died on the mattress. Safe to say we got the fuck out of the house because that shit is was way too spooky for my family. We should have burnt it.

– FalariRum

My mom’s first husband was a Navy pilot during the Gulf War. She hadn’t heard anything from his ship since it left but this was a war. One night, my mom woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. She saw her husband standing in the room. It wasn’t an ethereal form either, he appeared solid and utterly the same. The only thing different about him was that his head was shaved. He only had one thing to say, “Goodbye.” She went to the kitchen to get some water when the doorbell rang. Her husband had suffered a massive heart attack and died aboard the carrier. She was grief ridden but reasoned that the apparition had been a hallucination born of the stress of having a spouse deployed. Besides with his head shaved, he didn’t even look that familiar. Her mother and mother-in-law flew out immediately to plan for the funeral and receive the body. She stayed strong until the first viewing of the body. Her lifeless husband was bald. In a letter from his NFO the shaved head was explained as the result of a lost bet. There had been no way of knowing that his head had been shaved and my mom suffered a minor mental break.

– raider02

Keep the light on tonight, folks!

Design credits: Nupur Agarwal