u/Striking_Place8507

I don't post on Reddit much, and I'm definitely not a writer (I ran it through Grammarly) so excuse any weird formatting. Everything in this story is completely true to the best of my knowledge. Nothing has been made up, and everything described is something either I or a friend personally experienced.

I've been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to share it to see what other people think. Before I get into it, I should mention that I've had a couple of strange experiences before this.

The first happened shortly after my mom died, when I was in second grade. I felt someone gently grab my shoulder. It didn't feel threatening at all—more like a comforting presence. The second happened years later while I was at work. I was standing on a ledge, leaning against a fence, when I suddenly felt a hard yank, almost like someone was trying to pull me down. In both cases, I immediately looked around, and nobody was there.

Fast forward to college.

I moved into a house a little later than my roommates because I had badly injured my hand a few weeks before move-in and couldn't help lift anything. While I was staying back, my roommates told me they had been hearing footsteps in the attic at night. The attic was considered uninhabitable, and we weren't allowed access except in emergencies. They also mentioned hearing random creaks throughout the house.

I didn't think much of it. It was an old house.

When I finally moved in, everything seemed normal. I didn't hear any of the noises they described, and I never got a creepy feeling from the place.

A few weeks later, my roommate "L" and I were skateboarding around town when we found an old painting leaning against a trash can. Like every horror movie ever, we decided to bring it home. We were both film students, so we joked nonstop about it being haunted.

As a prank, we put it in our other roommate "K's" room while she was gone. She didn't say much about it—she just quietly moved it downstairs.

Eventually, I got tired of sharing a room and moved into the basement. I've slept in basements most of my life and honestly prefer them.

At first, everything was great. I was sleeping better than I had in months.

Then I started feeling sick.

Nothing severe—just generally run down. Around this time, our friend "C" was over a lot. One night, we smoked a joint and watched TV; he jokingly told me he was going to come downstairs later and mess with me.

That night, I fell asleep. Then I suddenly jolted awake.
For some reason, I felt extremely on edge.
I looked around and saw C standing in the middle of the basement. Assuming he was messing with me, I grabbed a pillow and launched it at him. He immediately darted behind a giant beanbag chair.

I got up to catch him.

Nobody was there.

Confused, I went upstairs and found C asleep on the couch, snoring. I woke him up and asked if he had been downstairs.
"No."
I made him swear he wasn't lying.
He wasn't.
I even called L to see if he'd come home. He was hours away visiting family. At that point, I convinced myself it was probably the weed and went back to sleep. A few days passed without anything strange happening.

Then it happened again.

I woke up in the middle of the night and saw C standing in the same spot. This time, I called out to him.
He ran off in the same direction as before. I immediately checked my phone and saw that C had been active on Snapchat a minute earlier—at his house, about fifteen minutes away. I called him freaking out. He called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

At this point, I started wondering if something was wrong with me. I talked to L about it and mentioned I had been feeling sick. We checked all the carbon monoxide detectors because I had read stories about people hallucinating due to CO poisoning. Everything checked out. The detectors worked. No issues.

That night, L left to visit a friend, and I stayed home.
This time, I saw my roommate instead of C.
I woke up and saw L standing in the basement.
Thinking he'd come home early, I called out to him.
He immediately ran off. As I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight, my phone started ringing.

It was L.

He was outside asking me to unlock the front door because he was locked out. I hadn't locked any doors.
That was the moment I officially lost it. I was getting increasingly sick and mentally exhausted. I went to the ER. They ran several tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me.

The next night, I stayed at my friend S's house to get away from everything. Around 2 AM, S got a phone call from L. He sounded panicked. He asked if I had left the house. When S sent him a picture of me asleep on the floor, L freaked out. Apparently, he'd heard someone banging on the front door and calling his name, asking to be let in.

He was convinced it was me.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much after hearing that.
Part of me was relieved someone else had experienced something weird. At least it wasn't just me anymore.
We had a friend at film school who studied occult literature, and his girlfriend considered herself a witch. We trusted them enough to ask for help.

The moment our friend stepped into the basement, he walked directly to the spot where I'd seen the figures.
He stopped and said the area felt incredibly cold and heavy. He gave us some sage and an Ouija board. We checked the painting first. He didn't think there was anything unusual about it beyond looking creepy and old.

So we decided to use the Ouija board. We followed all the usual rules, lit a candle, and sat in the exact spot where the figures always appeared. The first thing the planchette moved to was "666." We all laughed and assumed one of us was messing around.
After that, though, the responses became oddly specific. L started asking questions about a friend of his who had passed away, questions only she would have known. The board answered correctly. Oddly enough, using the Ouija board turned out to be one of the least scary paranormal experiences we had in that house.

Afterward, we saged the house and left for Thanksgiving break. When I returned, my girlfriend had bought me a sleep mask because my sleep had become such a mess.
One afternoon, I was trying to take a nap when I heard K talking with her sister upstairs.

I clearly heard her sister ask:
"Right there?"
And K responds:
"Yeah, stand there."
I pulled off my sleep mask.
Nobody was there.
I called K.
She was across the state driving her sister home.
I was completely alone.

That night, after work, I returned to an empty house.
My coworkers had told me that if I was dealing with something paranormal, the best thing to do was ignore it or be polite. I didn't even get the chance.

I was fully awake when I saw a hand slowly wrap around the corner of the basement staircase. To explain the layout: there was a landing where one staircase continued to the back door while another turned toward the basement. The hand appeared from that landing.
Its fingers slowly curled around the banister.

Then I saw its face.

The closest comparison I can make is Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie—but greener, thinner, and covered in veins.

I was done.

Absolutely done.

I ran directly at it, yelled for it to leave, spread salt around the stairs and my bed, and somehow managed to sleep afterward. Soon after, I contacted C again.
He told me his mother practiced witchcraft and offered a cleansing ritual. We opened every window and door in the house. C walked room to room with sage while reciting a spell intended to force unwanted spirits out.

For the first time, we opened the attic.

The moment he stepped inside, the sage went out.
We relit it and kept searching. While looking around, we noticed two mirrors facing each other. We'd heard that some people believe mirrors facing one another can act as spiritual "portals," so we turned them around.

A few moments later, we heard a massive bang from the basement. Then several smaller bangs. It sounded exactly like the basement window had slammed open, hit the ceiling, then bounced shut. We ran downstairs.
The window was closed. Then we noticed something else. As we approached the painting with the sage, the smoke suddenly started billowing away from it, moving against the direction it had been traveling.

I immediately carried the painting outside and left it there.

After that, I moved back upstairs. Not long afterward, L moved out completely. We reached out to multiple paranormal investigators, but nobody wanted to check the house.

Our landlord casually mentioned that someone may have died there years ago, or that someone had been transported to a hospital from the property and later died.

To this day, I have no idea what we were dealing with.
If anyone has theories—paranormal or otherwise—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

I don't post on Reddit much, and I'm definitely not a writer (I ran it through Grammarly) so excuse any weird formatting. Everything in this story is completely true to the best of my knowledge. Nothing has been made up, and everything described is something either I or a friend personally experienced.

It's a long one, so buckle up.

I've been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to share it to see what other people think. Before I get into it, I should mention that I've had a couple of strange experiences before this.

The first happened shortly after my mom died, when I was in second grade. I felt someone gently grab my shoulder. It didn't feel threatening at all—more like a comforting presence. The second happened years later while I was at work. I was standing on a ledge, leaning against a fence, when I suddenly felt a hard yank, almost like someone was trying to pull me down. In both cases, I immediately looked around, and nobody was there.

Fast forward to college.

I moved into a house a little later than my roommates because I had badly injured my hand a few weeks before move-in and couldn't help lift anything. While I was staying back, my roommates told me they had been hearing footsteps in the attic at night. The attic was considered uninhabitable, and we weren't allowed access except in emergencies. They also mentioned hearing random creaks throughout the house.

I didn't think much of it. It was an old house.

When I finally moved in, everything seemed normal. I didn't hear any of the noises they described, and I never got a creepy feeling from the place.

A few weeks later, my roommate "L" and I were skateboarding around town when we found an old painting leaning against a trash can. Like every horror movie ever, we decided to bring it home. We were both film students, so we joked nonstop about it being haunted.

As a prank, we put it in our other roommate "K's" room while she was gone. She didn't say much about it—she just quietly moved it downstairs.

Eventually, I got tired of sharing a room and moved into the basement. I've slept in basements most of my life and honestly prefer them.

At first, everything was great. I was sleeping better than I had in months.

Then I started feeling sick.

Nothing severe—just generally run down. Around this time, our friend "C" was over a lot. One night, we smoked a joint and watched TV; he jokingly told me he was going to come downstairs later and mess with me.

That night, I fell asleep. Then I suddenly jolted awake.
For some reason, I felt extremely on edge.
I looked around and saw C standing in the middle of the basement. Assuming he was messing with me, I grabbed a pillow and launched it at him. He immediately darted behind a giant beanbag chair.

I got up to catch him.

Nobody was there.

Confused, I went upstairs and found C asleep on the couch, snoring. I woke him up and asked if he had been downstairs.
"No."
I made him swear he wasn't lying.
He wasn't.
I even called L to see if he'd come home. He was hours away visiting family. At that point, I convinced myself it was probably the weed and went back to sleep. A few days passed without anything strange happening.

Then it happened again.

I woke up in the middle of the night and saw C standing in the same spot. This time, I called out to him.
He ran off in the same direction as before. I immediately checked my phone and saw that C had been active on Snapchat a minute earlier—at his house, about fifteen minutes away. I called him freaking out. He called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

At this point, I started wondering if something was wrong with me. I talked to L about it and mentioned I had been feeling sick. We checked all the carbon monoxide detectors because I had read stories about people hallucinating due to CO poisoning. Everything checked out. The detectors worked. No issues.

That night, L left to visit a friend, and I stayed home.
This time, I saw my roommate instead of C.
I woke up and saw L standing in the basement.
Thinking he'd come home early, I called out to him.
He immediately ran off. As I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight, my phone started ringing.

It was L.

He was outside asking me to unlock the front door because he was locked out. I hadn't locked any doors.
That was the moment I officially lost it. I was getting increasingly sick and mentally exhausted. I went to the ER. They ran several tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me.

The next night, I stayed at my friend S's house to get away from everything. Around 2 AM, S got a phone call from L. He sounded panicked. He asked if I had left the house. When S sent him a picture of me asleep on the floor, L freaked out. Apparently, he'd heard someone banging on the front door and calling his name, asking to be let in.

He was convinced it was me.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much after hearing that.
Part of me was relieved someone else had experienced something weird. At least it wasn't just me anymore.
We had a friend at film school who studied occult literature, and his girlfriend considered herself a witch. We trusted them enough to ask for help.

The moment our friend stepped into the basement, he walked directly to the spot where I'd seen the figures.
He stopped and said the area felt incredibly cold and heavy. He gave us some sage and an Ouija board. We checked the painting first. He didn't think there was anything unusual about it beyond looking creepy and old.

So we decided to use the Ouija board. We followed all the usual rules, lit a candle, and sat in the exact spot where the figures always appeared. The first thing the planchette moved to was "666." We all laughed and assumed one of us was messing around.
After that, though, the responses became oddly specific. L started asking questions about a friend of his who had passed away, questions only she would have known. The board answered correctly. Oddly enough, using the Ouija board turned out to be one of the least scary paranormal experiences we had in that house.

Afterward, we saged the house and left for Thanksgiving break. When I returned, my girlfriend had bought me a sleep mask because my sleep had become such a mess.
One afternoon, I was trying to take a nap when I heard K talking with her sister upstairs.

I clearly heard her sister ask:
"Right there?"
And K responds:
"Yeah, stand there."
I pulled off my sleep mask.
Nobody was there.
I called K.
She was across the state driving her sister home.
I was completely alone.

That night, after work, I returned to an empty house.
My coworkers had told me that if I was dealing with something paranormal, the best thing to do was ignore it or be polite. I didn't even get the chance.

I was fully awake when I saw a hand slowly wrap around the corner of the basement staircase. To explain the layout: there was a landing where one staircase continued to the back door while another turned toward the basement. The hand appeared from that landing.
Its fingers slowly curled around the banister.

Then I saw its face.

The closest comparison I can make is Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie—but greener, thinner, and covered in veins.

I was done.

Absolutely done.

I ran directly at it, yelled for it to leave, spread salt around the stairs and my bed, and somehow managed to sleep afterward. Soon after, I contacted C again.
He told me his mother practiced witchcraft and offered a cleansing ritual. We opened every window and door in the house. C walked room to room with sage while reciting a spell intended to force unwanted spirits out.

For the first time, we opened the attic.

The moment he stepped inside, the sage went out.
We relit it and kept searching. While looking around, we noticed two mirrors facing each other. We'd heard that some people believe mirrors facing one another can act as spiritual "portals," so we turned them around.

A few moments later, we heard a massive bang from the basement. Then several smaller bangs. It sounded exactly like the basement window had slammed open, hit the ceiling, then bounced shut. We ran downstairs.
The window was closed. Then we noticed something else. As we approached the painting with the sage, the smoke suddenly started billowing away from it, moving against the direction it had been traveling.

I immediately carried the painting outside and left it there.

After that, I moved back upstairs. Not long afterward, L moved out completely. We reached out to multiple paranormal investigators, but nobody wanted to check the house.

Our landlord casually mentioned that someone may have died there years ago, or that someone had been transported to a hospital from the property and later died.

To this day, I have no idea what we were dealing with.
If anyone has theories—paranormal or otherwise—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

I don't post on Reddit much, and I'm definitely not a writer (I ran it through Grammarly) so excuse any weird formatting. Everything in this story is completely true to the best of my knowledge. Nothing has been made up, and everything described is something either I or a friend personally experienced.

It's a long one, so buckle up.

I've been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to share it to see what other people think. Before I get into it, I should mention that I've had a couple of strange experiences before this.

The first happened shortly after my mom died, when I was in second grade. I felt someone gently grab my shoulder. It didn't feel threatening at all—more like a comforting presence. The second happened years later while I was at work. I was standing on a ledge, leaning against a fence, when I suddenly felt a hard yank, almost like someone was trying to pull me down. In both cases, I immediately looked around, and nobody was there.

Fast forward to college.

I moved into a house a little later than my roommates because I had badly injured my hand a few weeks before move-in and couldn't help lift anything. While I was staying back, my roommates told me they had been hearing footsteps in the attic at night. The attic was considered uninhabitable, and we weren't allowed access except in emergencies. They also mentioned hearing random creaks throughout the house.

I didn't think much of it. It was an old house.

When I finally moved in, everything seemed normal. I didn't hear any of the noises they described, and I never got a creepy feeling from the place.

A few weeks later, my roommate "L" and I were skateboarding around town when we found an old painting leaning against a trash can. Like every horror movie ever, we decided to bring it home. We were both film students, so we joked nonstop about it being haunted.

As a prank, we put it in our other roommate "K's" room while she was gone. She didn't say much about it—she just quietly moved it downstairs.

Eventually, I got tired of sharing a room and moved into the basement. I've slept in basements most of my life and honestly prefer them.

At first, everything was great. I was sleeping better than I had in months.

Then I started feeling sick.

Nothing severe—just generally run down. Around this time, our friend "C" was over a lot. One night, we smoked a joint and watched TV; he jokingly told me he was going to come downstairs later and mess with me.

That night, I fell asleep. Then I suddenly jolted awake.
For some reason, I felt extremely on edge.
I looked around and saw C standing in the middle of the basement. Assuming he was messing with me, I grabbed a pillow and launched it at him. He immediately darted behind a giant beanbag chair.

I got up to catch him.

Nobody was there.

Confused, I went upstairs and found C asleep on the couch, snoring. I woke him up and asked if he had been downstairs.
"No."
I made him swear he wasn't lying.
He wasn't.
I even called L to see if he'd come home. He was hours away visiting family. At that point, I convinced myself it was probably the weed and went back to sleep. A few days passed without anything strange happening.

Then it happened again.
I woke up in the middle of the night and saw C standing in the same spot. This time, I called out to him.
He ran off in the same direction as before. I immediately checked my phone and saw that C had been active on Snapchat a minute earlier—at his house, about fifteen minutes away. I called him freaking out. He called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

At this point, I started wondering if something was wrong with me. I talked to L about it and mentioned I had been feeling sick. We checked all the carbon monoxide detectors because I had read stories about people hallucinating due to CO poisoning. Everything checked out. The detectors worked. No issues.

That night, L left to visit a friend, and I stayed home.
This time, I saw my roommate instead of C.
I woke up and saw L standing in the basement.
Thinking he'd come home early, I called out to him.
He immediately ran off. As I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight, my phone started ringing.

It was L.
He was outside asking me to unlock the front door because he was locked out. I hadn't locked any doors.
That was the moment I officially lost it. I was getting increasingly sick and mentally exhausted. I went to the ER. They ran several tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me.

The next night, I stayed at my friend S's house to get away from everything. Around 2 AM, S got a phone call from L. He sounded panicked. He asked if I had left the house. When S sent him a picture of me asleep on the floor, L freaked out. Apparently, he'd heard someone banging on the front door and calling his name, asking to be let in.

He was convinced it was me.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much after hearing that.
Part of me was relieved someone else had experienced something weird. At least it wasn't just me anymore.
We had a friend at film school who studied occult literature, and his girlfriend considered herself a witch. We trusted them enough to ask for help.
The moment our friend stepped into the basement, he walked directly to the spot where I'd seen the figures.
He stopped and said the area felt incredibly cold and heavy. He gave us some sage and an Ouija board. We checked the painting first. He didn't think there was anything unusual about it beyond looking creepy and old.

So we decided to use the Ouija board. We followed all the usual rules, lit a candle, and sat in the exact spot where the figures always appeared. The first thing the planchette moved to was "666." We all laughed and assumed one of us was messing around.
After that, though, the responses became oddly specific. L started asking questions about a friend of his who had passed away, questions only she would have known. The board answered correctly. Oddly enough, using the Ouija board turned out to be one of the least scary paranormal experiences we had in that house.

Afterward, we saged the house and left for Thanksgiving break. When I returned, my girlfriend had bought me a sleep mask because my sleep had become such a mess.
One afternoon, I was trying to take a nap when I heard K talking with her sister upstairs.

I clearly heard her sister ask:
"Right there?"
And K responds:
"Yeah, stand there."
I pulled off my sleep mask.
Nobody was there.
I called K.
She was across the state driving her sister home.
I was completely alone.

That night, after work, I returned to an empty house.
My coworkers had told me that if I was dealing with something paranormal, the best thing to do was ignore it or be polite. I didn't even get the chance.
I was fully awake when I saw a hand slowly wrap around the corner of the basement staircase. To explain the layout: there was a landing where one staircase continued to the back door while another turned toward the basement.
The hand appeared from that landing.
Its fingers slowly curled around the banister.
Then I saw its face.
The closest comparison I can make is Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie—but greener, thinner, and covered in veins.

I was done.
Absolutely done.

I ran directly at it, yelled for it to leave, spread salt around the stairs and my bed, and somehow managed to sleep afterward. Soon after, I contacted C again.
He told me his mother practiced witchcraft and offered a cleansing ritual. We opened every window and door in the house. C walked room to room with sage while reciting a spell intended to force unwanted spirits out.

For the first time, we opened the attic.

The moment he stepped inside, the sage went out.
We relit it and kept searching. While looking around, we noticed two mirrors facing each other. We'd heard that some people believe mirrors facing one another can act as spiritual "portals," so we turned them around.

A few moments later, we heard a massive bang from the basement. Then several smaller bangs. It sounded exactly like the basement window had slammed open, hit the ceiling, then bounced shut. We ran downstairs.
The window was closed. Then we noticed something else. As we approached the painting with the sage, the smoke suddenly started billowing away from it, moving against the direction it had been traveling.

I immediately carried the painting outside and left it there.

After that, I moved back upstairs. Not long afterward, L moved out completely. We reached out to multiple paranormal investigators, but nobody wanted to check the house.

Our landlord casually mentioned that someone may have died there years ago, or that someone had been transported to a hospital from the property and later died.

To this day, I have no idea what we were dealing with.
If anyone has theories—paranormal or otherwise—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

I don't post on Reddit much, and I'm definitely not a writer (I ran it through Grammarly) so excuse any weird formatting. Everything in this story is completely true to the best of my knowledge. Nothing has been made up, and everything described is something either I or a friend personally experienced.

I've been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to share it to see what other people think. Before I get into it, I should mention that I've had a couple of strange experiences before this.

The first happened shortly after my mom died, when I was in second grade. I felt someone gently grab my shoulder. It didn't feel threatening at all—more like a comforting presence. The second happened years later while I was at work. I was standing on a ledge, leaning against a fence, when I suddenly felt a hard yank, almost like someone was trying to pull me down. In both cases, I immediately looked around, and nobody was there.

Fast forward to college.

I moved into a house a little later than my roommates because I had badly injured my hand a few weeks before move-in and couldn't help lift anything. While I was staying back, my roommates told me they had been hearing footsteps in the attic at night. The attic was considered uninhabitable, and we weren't allowed access except in emergencies. They also mentioned hearing random creaks throughout the house.

I didn't think much of it. It was an old house.

When I finally moved in, everything seemed normal. I didn't hear any of the noises they described, and I never got a creepy feeling from the place.

A few weeks later, my roommate "L" and I were skateboarding around town when we found an old painting leaning against a trash can. Like every horror movie ever, we decided to bring it home. We were both film students, so we joked nonstop about it being haunted.

As a prank, we put it in our other roommate "K's" room while she was gone. She didn't say much about it—she just quietly moved it downstairs.

Eventually, I got tired of sharing a room and moved into the basement. I've slept in basements most of my life and honestly prefer them.

At first, everything was great. I was sleeping better than I had in months.

Then I started feeling sick.

Nothing severe—just generally run down. Around this time, our friend "C" was over a lot. One night, we smoked a joint and watched TV; he jokingly told me he was going to come downstairs later and mess with me.

That night, I fell asleep. Then I suddenly jolted awake.
For some reason, I felt extremely on edge.
I looked around and saw C standing in the middle of the basement. Assuming he was messing with me, I grabbed a pillow and launched it at him. He immediately darted behind a giant beanbag chair.

I got up to catch him.

Nobody was there.

Confused, I went upstairs and found C asleep on the couch, snoring. I woke him up and asked if he had been downstairs.
"No."
I made him swear he wasn't lying.
He wasn't.
I even called L to see if he'd come home. He was hours away visiting family. At that point, I convinced myself it was probably the weed and went back to sleep. A few days passed without anything strange happening.

Then it happened again.

I woke up in the middle of the night and saw C standing in the same spot. This time, I called out to him.
He ran off in the same direction as before. I immediately checked my phone and saw that C had been active on Snapchat a minute earlier—at his house, about fifteen minutes away. I called him freaking out. He called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

At this point, I started wondering if something was wrong with me. I talked to L about it and mentioned I had been feeling sick. We checked all the carbon monoxide detectors because I had read stories about people hallucinating due to CO poisoning. Everything checked out. The detectors worked. No issues.

That night, L left to visit a friend, and I stayed home.
This time, I saw my roommate instead of C.
I woke up and saw L standing in the basement.
Thinking he'd come home early, I called out to him.
He immediately ran off. As I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight, my phone started ringing.

It was L.

He was outside asking me to unlock the front door because he was locked out. I hadn't locked any doors.
That was the moment I officially lost it. I was getting increasingly sick and mentally exhausted. I went to the ER. They ran several tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me.

The next night, I stayed at my friend S's house to get away from everything. Around 2 AM, S got a phone call from L. He sounded panicked. He asked if I had left the house. When S sent him a picture of me asleep on the floor, L freaked out. Apparently, he'd heard someone banging on the front door and calling his name, asking to be let in.

He was convinced it was me.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much after hearing that.
Part of me was relieved someone else had experienced something weird. At least it wasn't just me anymore.
We had a friend at film school who studied occult literature, and his girlfriend considered herself a witch. We trusted them enough to ask for help.

The moment our friend stepped into the basement, he walked directly to the spot where I'd seen the figures.
He stopped and said the area felt incredibly cold and heavy. He gave us some sage and an Ouija board. We checked the painting first. He didn't think there was anything unusual about it beyond looking creepy and old.

So we decided to use the Ouija board. We followed all the usual rules, lit a candle, and sat in the exact spot where the figures always appeared. The first thing the planchette moved to was "666." We all laughed and assumed one of us was messing around.
After that, though, the responses became oddly specific. L started asking questions about a friend of his who had passed away, questions only she would have known. The board answered correctly. Oddly enough, using the Ouija board turned out to be one of the least scary paranormal experiences we had in that house.

Afterward, we saged the house and left for Thanksgiving break. When I returned, my girlfriend had bought me a sleep mask because my sleep had become such a mess.
One afternoon, I was trying to take a nap when I heard K talking with her sister upstairs.

I clearly heard her sister ask:
"Right there?"
And K responds:
"Yeah, stand there."
I pulled off my sleep mask.
Nobody was there.
I called K.
She was across the state driving her sister home.
I was completely alone.

That night, after work, I returned to an empty house.
My coworkers had told me that if I was dealing with something paranormal, the best thing to do was ignore it or be polite. I didn't even get the chance.

I was fully awake when I saw a hand slowly wrap around the corner of the basement staircase. To explain the layout: there was a landing where one staircase continued to the back door while another turned toward the basement. The hand appeared from that landing.
Its fingers slowly curled around the banister.

Then I saw its face.

The closest comparison I can make is Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie—but greener, thinner, and covered in veins.

I was done.

Absolutely done.

I ran directly at it, yelled for it to leave, spread salt around the stairs and my bed, and somehow managed to sleep afterward. Soon after, I contacted C again.
He told me his mother practiced witchcraft and offered a cleansing ritual. We opened every window and door in the house. C walked room to room with sage while reciting a spell intended to force unwanted spirits out.

For the first time, we opened the attic.

The moment he stepped inside, the sage went out.
We relit it and kept searching. While looking around, we noticed two mirrors facing each other. We'd heard that some people believe mirrors facing one another can act as spiritual "portals," so we turned them around.

A few moments later, we heard a massive bang from the basement. Then several smaller bangs. It sounded exactly like the basement window had slammed open, hit the ceiling, then bounced shut. We ran downstairs.
The window was closed. Then we noticed something else. As we approached the painting with the sage, the smoke suddenly started billowing away from it, moving against the direction it had been traveling.

I immediately carried the painting outside and left it there.

After that, I moved back upstairs. Not long afterward, L moved out completely. We reached out to multiple paranormal investigators, but nobody wanted to check the house.

Our landlord casually mentioned that someone may have died there years ago, or that someone had been transported to a hospital from the property and later died.

To this day, I have no idea what we were dealing with.
If anyone has theories—paranormal or otherwise—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

Repost since I formatted it better

I don't post on Reddit much, and I'm definitely not a writer, so excuse any weird formatting. Everything in this story is completely true to the best of my knowledge. Nothing has been made up, and everything described is something either I or a friend personally experienced.

It's a long one, so buckle up.

I've been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to share it to see what other people think. Before I get into it, I should mention that I've had a couple of strange experiences before this.

The first happened shortly after my mom died when I was in second grade. I felt someone gently grab my shoulder. It didn't feel threatening at all—more like a comforting presence. The second happened years later while I was at work. I was standing on a ledge, leaning against a fence, when I suddenly felt a hard yank, almost like someone was trying to pull me down. In both cases, I immediately looked around and nobody was there.

Fast forward to college.

I moved into a house a little later than my roommates because I had badly injured my hand a few weeks before move-in and couldn't help lift anything. While I was staying back, my roommates told me they had been hearing footsteps in the attic at night. The attic was considered uninhabitable, and we weren't allowed access except in emergencies. They also mentioned hearing random creaks throughout the house.

I didn't think much of it. It was an old house.

When I finally moved in, everything seemed normal. I didn't hear any of the noises they described, and I never got a creepy feeling from the place.

A few weeks later, my roommate "L" and I were skateboarding around town when we found an old painting leaning against a trash can. Like every horror movie ever, we decided to bring it home. We were both film students, so we joked nonstop about it being haunted.

As a prank, we put it in our other roommate "K's" room while she was gone. She didn't say much about it—she just quietly moved it downstairs.

Eventually, I got tired of sharing a room and moved into the basement. I've slept in basements most of my life and honestly prefer them.

At first, everything was great. I was sleeping better than I had in months.

Then I started feeling sick.

Nothing severe—just generally run down. Around this time, our friend "C" was over a lot. One night we smoked a joint and watched TV, he jokingly told me he was going to come downstairs later and mess with me.

That night, I fell asleep. Then I suddenly jolted awake.
For some reason, I felt extremely on edge.
I looked around and saw C standing in the middle of the basement. Assuming he was messing with me, I grabbed a pillow and launched it at him. He immediately darted behind a giant beanbag chair.

I got up to catch him.

Nobody was there.

Confused, I went upstairs and found C asleep on the couch, snoring. I woke him up and asked if he had been downstairs.
"No."
I made him swear he wasn't lying.
He wasn't.
I even called L to see if he'd come home. He was hours away visiting family. At that point I convinced myself it was probably the weed and went back to sleep. A few days passed without anything strange happening.

Then it happened again.
I woke up in the middle of the night and saw C standing in the exact same spot. This time, I called out to him.
He ran off in the same direction as before. I immediately checked my phone and saw that C had been active on Snapchat a minute earlier—at his house, about fifteen minutes away. I called him freaking out.He called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

At this point I started wondering if something was wrong with me. I talked to L about it and mentioned I had been feeling sick. We checked all the carbon monoxide detectors because I had read stories about people hallucinating due to CO poisoning. Everything checked out. The detectors worked. No issues.

That night, L left to visit a friend, and I stayed home.
This time, I saw my roommate instead of C.
I woke up and saw L standing in the basement.
Thinking he'd come home early, I called out to him.
He immediately ran off. As I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight, my phone started ringing.

It was L.
He was outside asking me to unlock the front door because he was locked out. I hadn't locked any doors.
That was the moment I officially lost it. I was getting increasingly sick and mentally exhausted. I went to the ER. They ran several tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me.

The next night, I stayed at my friend S's house to get away from everything. Around 2 AM, S got a phone call from L. He sounded panicked. He asked if I had left the house. When S sent him a picture of me asleep on the floor, L freaked out. Apparently, he'd heard someone banging on the front door and calling his name, asking to be let in.

He was convinced it was me.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much after hearing that.
Part of me was relieved someone else had experienced something weird. At least it wasn't just me anymore.
We had a friend at film school who studied occult literature, and his girlfriend considered herself a witch. We trusted them enough to ask for help.
The moment our friend stepped into the basement, he walked directly to the spot where I'd seen the figures.
He stopped and said the area felt incredibly cold and heavy. He gave us some sage and an Ouija board. We checked the painting first. He didn't think there was anything unusual about it beyond looking creepy and old.

So we decided to use the Ouija board. We followed all the usual rules, lit a candle, and sat in the exact spot where the figures always appeared. The first thing the planchette moved to was "666." We all laughed and assumed one of us was messing around.
After that, though, the responses became oddly specific. L started asking questions about a friend of his who had passed away, questions only she would have known. The board answered correctly. Oddly enough, using the Ouija board ended up being one of the least scary paranormal experiences we had in that house.

Afterward, we saged the house and left for Thanksgiving break. When I returned, my girlfriend had bought me a sleep mask because my sleep had become such a mess.
One afternoon, I was trying to take a nap when I heard K talking with her sister upstairs.

I clearly heard her sister ask:
"Right there?"
And K respond:
"Yeah, stand there."
I pulled off my sleep mask.
Nobody was there.
I called K.
She was across the state driving her sister home.
I was completely alone.

That night, after work, I returned to an empty house.
My coworkers had told me that if I was dealing with something paranormal, the best thing to do was ignore it or be polite. I didn't even get the chance.
I was fully awake when I saw a hand slowly wrap around the corner of the basement staircase. To explain the layout: there was a landing where one staircase continued to the back door while another turned toward the basement.
The hand appeared from that landing.
Its fingers slowly curled around the banister.
Then I saw its face.
The closest comparison I can make is Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie—but greener, thinner, and covered in veins.

I was done.
Absolutely done.

I ran directly at it, yelled for it to leave, spread salt around the stairs and my bed, and somehow managed to sleep afterward.Soon after, I contacted C again.
He told me his mother practiced witchcraft and offered a cleansing ritual. We opened every window and door in the house. C walked room to room with sage while reciting a spell intended to force unwanted spirits out.

For the first time, we opened the attic.

The moment he stepped inside, the sage went out.
We relit it and kept searching. While looking around, we noticed two mirrors facing each other. We'd heard that some people believe mirrors facing one another can act as spiritual "portals," so we turned them around.

A few moments later, we heard a massive bang from the basement. Then several smaller bangs. It sounded exactly like the basement window had slammed open, hit the ceiling, then bounced shut. We ran downstairs.
The window was closed. Then we noticed something else. As we approached the painting with the sage, the smoke suddenly started billowing away from it, moving against the direction it had been traveling.

I immediately carried the painting outside and left it there.

After that, I moved back upstairs. Not long afterward, L moved out completely. We reached out to multiple paranormal investigators, but nobody wanted to come check the house.

Our landlord casually mentioned that someone may have died there years ago, or that someone had been transported to a hospital from the property and later died.

To this day, I have no idea what we were dealing with.
If anyone has theories—paranormal or otherwise—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

I don't post on Reddit much, and I'm definitely not a writer, so excuse any weird formatting. Everything in this story is completely true to the best of my knowledge. Nothing has been made up, and everything described is something either I or a friend personally experienced.

It's a long one, so buckle up.

I've been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to share it to see what other people think. Before I get into it, I should mention that I've had a couple of strange experiences before this.

The first happened shortly after my mom died when I was in second grade. I felt someone gently grab my shoulder. It didn't feel threatening at all—more like a comforting presence. The second happened years later while I was at work. I was standing on a ledge, leaning against a fence, when I suddenly felt a hard yank, almost like someone was trying to pull me down. In both cases, I immediately looked around and nobody was there.

Fast forward to college.

I moved into a house a little later than my roommates because I had badly injured my hand a few weeks before move-in and couldn't help lift anything. While I was staying back, my roommates told me they had been hearing footsteps in the attic at night. The attic was considered uninhabitable, and we weren't allowed access except in emergencies. They also mentioned hearing random creaks throughout the house.

I didn't think much of it. It was an old house.

When I finally moved in, everything seemed normal. I didn't hear any of the noises they described, and I never got a creepy feeling from the place.

A few weeks later, my roommate "L" and I were skateboarding around town when we found an old painting leaning against a trash can. Like every horror movie ever, we decided to bring it home. We were both film students, so we joked nonstop about it being haunted.

As a prank, we put it in our other roommate "K's" room while she was gone. She didn't say much about it—she just quietly moved it downstairs.

Eventually, I got tired of sharing a room and moved into the basement. I've slept in basements most of my life and honestly prefer them.

At first, everything was great. I was sleeping better than I had in months.

Then I started feeling sick.

Nothing severe—just generally run down. Around this time, our friend "C" was over a lot. One night we smoked a joint and watched TV, he jokingly told me he was going to come downstairs later and mess with me.

That night, I fell asleep. Then I suddenly jolted awake.
For some reason, I felt extremely on edge.
I looked around and saw C standing in the middle of the basement. Assuming he was messing with me, I grabbed a pillow and launched it at him. He immediately darted behind a giant beanbag chair.

I got up to catch him.

Nobody was there.

Confused, I went upstairs and found C asleep on the couch, snoring. I woke him up and asked if he had been downstairs.
"No."
I made him swear he wasn't lying.
He wasn't.
I even called L to see if he'd come home. He was hours away visiting family. At that point I convinced myself it was probably the weed and went back to sleep. A few days passed without anything strange happening.

Then it happened again.
I woke up in the middle of the night and saw C standing in the exact same spot. This time, I called out to him.
He ran off in the same direction as before. I immediately checked my phone and saw that C had been active on Snapchat a minute earlier—at his house, about fifteen minutes away. I called him freaking out.He called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

At this point I started wondering if something was wrong with me. I talked to L about it and mentioned I had been feeling sick. We checked all the carbon monoxide detectors because I had read stories about people hallucinating due to CO poisoning. Everything checked out. The detectors worked. No issues.

That night, L left to visit a friend, and I stayed home.
This time, I saw my roommate instead of C.
I woke up and saw L standing in the basement.
Thinking he'd come home early, I called out to him.
He immediately ran off. As I reached for my phone to turn on the flashlight, my phone started ringing.

It was L.
He was outside asking me to unlock the front door because he was locked out. I hadn't locked any doors.
That was the moment I officially lost it. I was getting increasingly sick and mentally exhausted. I went to the ER. They ran several tests and couldn't find anything wrong with me.

The next night, I stayed at my friend S's house to get away from everything. Around 2 AM, S got a phone call from L. He sounded panicked. He asked if I had left the house. When S sent him a picture of me asleep on the floor, L freaked out. Apparently, he'd heard someone banging on the front door and calling his name, asking to be let in.

He was convinced it was me.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much after hearing that.
Part of me was relieved someone else had experienced something weird. At least it wasn't just me anymore.
We had a friend at film school who studied occult literature, and his girlfriend considered herself a witch. We trusted them enough to ask for help.
The moment our friend stepped into the basement, he walked directly to the spot where I'd seen the figures.
He stopped and said the area felt incredibly cold and heavy. He gave us some sage and an Ouija board. We checked the painting first. He didn't think there was anything unusual about it beyond looking creepy and old.

So we decided to use the Ouija board. We followed all the usual rules, lit a candle, and sat in the exact spot where the figures always appeared. The first thing the planchette moved to was "666." We all laughed and assumed one of us was messing around.
After that, though, the responses became oddly specific. L started asking questions about a friend of his who had passed away, questions only she would have known. The board answered correctly. Oddly enough, using the Ouija board ended up being one of the least scary paranormal experiences we had in that house.

Afterward, we saged the house and left for Thanksgiving break. When I returned, my girlfriend had bought me a sleep mask because my sleep had become such a mess.
One afternoon, I was trying to take a nap when I heard K talking with her sister upstairs.

I clearly heard her sister ask:
"Right there?"
And K respond:
"Yeah, stand there."
I pulled off my sleep mask.
Nobody was there.
I called K.
She was across the state driving her sister home.
I was completely alone.

That night, after work, I returned to an empty house.
My coworkers had told me that if I was dealing with something paranormal, the best thing to do was ignore it or be polite. I didn't even get the chance.
I was fully awake when I saw a hand slowly wrap around the corner of the basement staircase. To explain the layout: there was a landing where one staircase continued to the back door while another turned toward the basement.
The hand appeared from that landing.
Its fingers slowly curled around the banister.
Then I saw its face.
The closest comparison I can make is Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie—but greener, thinner, and covered in veins.

I was done.
Absolutely done.

I ran directly at it, yelled for it to leave, spread salt around the stairs and my bed, and somehow managed to sleep afterward.Soon after, I contacted C again.
He told me his mother practiced witchcraft and offered a cleansing ritual. We opened every window and door in the house. C walked room to room with sage while reciting a spell intended to force unwanted spirits out.

For the first time, we opened the attic.

The moment he stepped inside, the sage went out.
We relit it and kept searching. While looking around, we noticed two mirrors facing each other. We'd heard that some people believe mirrors facing one another can act as spiritual "portals," so we turned them around.

A few moments later, we heard a massive bang from the basement. Then several smaller bangs. It sounded exactly like the basement window had slammed open, hit the ceiling, then bounced shut. We ran downstairs.
The window was closed. Then we noticed something else. As we approached the painting with the sage, the smoke suddenly started billowing away from it, moving against the direction it had been traveling.

I immediately carried the painting outside and left it there.

After that, I moved back upstairs. Not long afterward, L moved out completely. We reached out to multiple paranormal investigators, but nobody wanted to come check the house.

Our landlord casually mentioned that someone may have died there years ago, or that someone had been transported to a hospital from the property and later died.

To this day, I have no idea what we were dealing with.
If anyone has theories—paranormal or otherwise—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

I don’t post on Reddit like at all and by no means am a writer so excuse me if this is formatted weird, this story is a completely true, no details are made up and all this stuff I (or a friend) have personally experienced. It’s a pretty long one so be ready.

I’ve been holding this story in for a little bit (besides a lot of my friends) and wanted to share it and get people’s opinions on what I was seeing/dealing with. So first I should preface that I have had multiple “supernatural” experiences before. The first after my mom died in second grade I felt someone grab my shoulder in a soft manner, almost a kind spirit. The second time I was at work on a ledge, leaning against a fence and felt a yank almost like someone was trying to take me down, both situations I looked around and no one was to be seen.

I moved in to this house a little later than my roommates, I hurt my hand really bad a couple weeks before the move in date and couldn’t lift anything so I decided to stay back. My roommates told me that they began to hear walking at night in our attic (the attic was considered inhabitable and we were not allowed access, I was shown where the key was for emergencies only) or just creaky floorboards in general which I just thought it was an old house so whatever.

I moved in a week or so after they did and everything was normal, I didn’t hear the noises they were talking about or even had a creepy feeling, it just felt like a normal house. A couple weeks after that me and my roommate (we will call L) were skating around when we came across a painting on the side of the road leaning on a trash can, like every horror movie ever we picked it up and decided we were going to bring it home. We were both going to film school at the time so passed around some haunted painting jokes. We both shared a room and thought it would be a funny idea to move it into our roommates (we will call K) room while she was gone, she didn’t say anything about the painting and just quietly moved it downstairs.

I had gotten sick of sharing a room so I decided to move to the basement. I’ve slept in basements for most of my life and just like a cooler, darker room. At first nothing was off and I actually started getting some sleep for the first time in a while. A week or so later I felt myself kind of getting sick but just ignored it and kept going on my merry way, we had a friend (we will call C) that would frequently stop by and one night we decided to share a joint and watch some tv. He made a joke that he was gonna come downstairs and mess with me so I was on high alert but finally laid down and got some rest. As soon as I fell asleep I jolted up and for some reason was on edge, I looked around and saw C standing in the center of the room and thought it was just him messing with me so I grabbed a pillow and chucked it as hard as I could at him and saw him dart away behind a bean bag chair (one of those huge ones that’s like the size of a sumo wrestler) I got up to investigate to see he was no longer in the basement so I went upstairs.

As I got up the stairs I heard snoring and he was on the couch, dead asleep. I woke him up and asked him if he had been in the basement and much to my dismay, he had not been. I made him promise me he hadn’t before calling L and asking if he was home, he was across the state back home. I got pretty scared but just thought that it might have been the weed and went back to sleep and didn’t have anything else happen that night.

But of course it wasn’t over.

A couple days go by with nothing weird happening, I went on with my daily life feeling a little sick I should add. I went to the basement and fell asleep a little early but I felt off again this time, something was up but I ignored the feeling and went to sleep. Once again, C was standing in the center of the room, I called out to him for him to run off in the same direction as last time. I went up the stairs thinking he might have come over while I was asleep to see L but neither him or my roommate were there. I looked at my Snapchat to give him a call and it said that he was home as of a minute ago, him living about 15 minutes from my house with no car. I gave him a call freaking out, he called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. I talked to L and asked him if he had been seeing things, he said no and asked if I have been feeling alright or maybe there was something wrong with me, other than feeling sick there wasn’t anything wrong, I had seen posts about carbon monoxide poisoning and it making people hallucinate and feel sick so we checked our detectors in the house, made sure they worked and had fresh batteries but no beeps. He had to go to a friends’ house so we parted ways and I went to bed.

This night was different, for the first time I saw my roommate in the basement, not our friend. I thought he had got home early and just walked down the stairs to talk to me, he was very social and would do that even if I was asleep so I called out to him, he ran in a different direction than my friend appeared to and when I picked up my phone to get my flashlight up my roommate was calling me and asking me to let him in since he was locked out.

I didn’t lock any doors.

At that point I was done, it was messing with my head and was getting super sick, I went to the ER and they did about 5 tests on me and couldn’t find anything. I just needed a break so i spent the night at a friends (S) house the next night. Around 2 am S got a call from L asking if I left her house, when she sent him a picture of me dead asleep on the floor he freaked out. He had heard me at the front door banging on it asking him to let me in!

I was petrified when he told me that story in the morning, part of me was glad that someone else was experiencing it and that he couldn’t think it was just me anymore but didn’t know what to do. We had a friend at the film school we went to that studied left handed literature and things like it, his girlfriend was a “witch”and we trusted him so he came over to check out the house. As soon as he stepped into the basement he walked over to the spot I saw the “apparition” in he stopped and stated that he felt super cold and very heavy. He immediately handed us some sage and an ouija board and said if we wanted to try and communicate we could. We had him check out the painting, he said there was nothing of note about it and it was just old and creepy.

We decided to use the ouija board, horrible decision I know but I wanted to find out what was messing with me and maybe try and coexist with this thing, maybe it wasn’t malevolent, maybe it was a friend?

We sat down in front of it, lit a candle and sat in the very spot it showed up all those times, went through the rules and began to talk to it, the first time, which I assume was one of my roommates messing with me made the planchet go to “666” and we thought this thing was a bust. We asked it some various questions, are you a boy or a girl, how old it was, simple questions, and I noticed L was super uncomfortable. He believed the spirit we were talking to was a friend of his that passed away and was asking it questions only she would know the answers to and it was doing very well, the ouija board was possibly the most pleasant experience we had with the supernatural in that house.

We saged the house very nicely and all left to go be with our families for thanksgiving, when I got back I had gotten a sleep mask from my girlfriend due to my sleeping/haunting issues. K and her sister was home and I had work later that night so laid down to take a nap when I heard them talking. My roommates sister said “right there?” And my roommate responded “yes, stand there” I opened up my eyes and took my sleep mask off for them to not be there, I gave my roommate a call and she was across the state bringing her sister home. I was alone in the house.

I got home from work that night creeped out by the experience earlier, I was alone again and talked with all my coworkers about it and they gave me some advice on how to coexist with ghosts, don’t acknowledge and if you do, be kind. I didn’t even fall asleep this time when I saw a hand creep around the corner of the staircase, for a visual the staircase was technically two, one went down (straight) to the backdoor, the other turned left at that landing and went to the basement, that landing is where the hand was stemming from. It then curled its fingers around the bannister and showed its face, imagine Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie but greener and super veiny. I was done, I ran at the stairs where this thing was standing, told it to leave, placed salt on the stairs and around my bed before going to bed.

I contacted C, he recently told me that his mother was a “witch” and she gave us a spell to recite and how to get this ghost out. We opened all the windows and doors, he began reciting the spell and walking around the house with the sage trying to push this thing out, for one of the first times I opened up the attic door and as he went in, the sage went out. He came down the stairs and relit it but I decided to join him to see why it went out, there wasn’t a draft up there or anything so it was really odd.

I walked around and saw two mirrors facing each other which I now know could be seen as a “portal” we broke it (turned the mirrors around) and kept walking around, we heard a loud bang from the basement followed by smaller bangs. As if the window down there (it opened upwards kinda like a Delorean’s doors) had slammed all the way open, hit the ceiling, fell back down and bounced a little bit. We went down there and that window was now closed. We went up to the painting that was down there and the smoke from the sage immediately started pillowing off in the opposite direction. I brought the painting outside and left it there. After that I moved back upstairs, soon after that L moved out.

We tried talking to multiple paranormal “experts” and no one wanted to come check it out, or landlord had made a one off comment about someone possibly dying in the house, or that someone was transported to the hospital from the house where they died. If anyone has any idea what we dealt with I’d love to hear your theories!

I don’t post on Reddit like at all and by no means am a writer so excuse me if this is formatted weird, this story is a completely true, no details are made up and all this stuff I (or a friend) have personally experienced. It’s a pretty long one so be ready.

I’ve been holding this story in for a little bit (besides a lot of my friends) and wanted to share it and get people’s opinions on what I was seeing/dealing with. So first I should preface that I have had multiple “supernatural” experiences before. The first after my mom died in second grade I felt someone grab my shoulder in a soft manner, almost a kind spirit. The second time I was at work on a ledge, leaning against a fence and felt a yank almost like someone was trying to take me down, both situations I looked around and no one was to be seen.

I moved in to this house a little later than my roommates, I hurt my hand really bad a couple weeks before the move in date and couldn’t lift anything so I decided to stay back. My roommates told me that they began to hear walking at night in our attic (the attic was considered inhabitable and we were not allowed access, I was shown where the key was for emergencies only) or just creaky floorboards in general which I just thought it was an old house so whatever.

I moved in a week or so after they did and everything was normal, I didn’t hear the noises they were talking about or even had a creepy feeling, it just felt like a normal house. A couple weeks after that me and my roommate (we will call L) were skating around when we came across a painting on the side of the road leaning on a trash can, like every horror movie ever we picked it up and decided we were going to bring it home. We were both going to film school at the time so passed around some haunted painting jokes. We both shared a room and thought it would be a funny idea to move it into our roommates (we will call K) room while she was gone, she didn’t say anything about the painting and just quietly moved it downstairs.

I had gotten sick of sharing a room so I decided to move to the basement. I’ve slept in basements for most of my life and just like a cooler, darker room. At first nothing was off and I actually started getting some sleep for the first time in a while. A week or so later I felt myself kind of getting sick but just ignored it and kept going on my merry way, we had a friend (we will call C) that would frequently stop by and one night we decided to share a joint and watch some tv. He made a joke that he was gonna come downstairs and mess with me so I was on high alert but finally laid down and got some rest. As soon as I fell asleep I jolted up and for some reason was on edge, I looked around and saw C standing in the center of the room and thought it was just him messing with me so I grabbed a pillow and chucked it as hard as I could at him and saw him dart away behind a bean bag chair (one of those huge ones that’s like the size of a sumo wrestler) I got up to investigate to see he was no longer in the basement so I went upstairs.

As I got up the stairs I heard snoring and he was on the couch, dead asleep. I woke him up and asked him if he had been in the basement and much to my dismay, he had not been. I made him promise me he hadn’t before calling L and asking if he was home, he was across the state back home. I got pretty scared but just thought that it might have been the weed and went back to sleep and didn’t have anything else happen that night.

But of course it wasn’t over.

A couple days go by with nothing weird happening, I went on with my daily life feeling a little sick I should add. I went to the basement and fell asleep a little early but I felt off again this time, something was up but I ignored the feeling and went to sleep. Once again, C was standing in the center of the room, I called out to him for him to run off in the same direction as last time. I went up the stairs thinking he might have come over while I was asleep to see L but neither him or my roommate were there. I looked at my Snapchat to give him a call and it said that he was home as of a minute ago, him living about 15 minutes from my house with no car. I gave him a call freaking out, he called me a wimp and told me to deal with it.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. I talked to L and asked him if he had been seeing things, he said no and asked if I have been feeling alright or maybe there was something wrong with me, other than feeling sick there wasn’t anything wrong, I had seen posts about carbon monoxide poisoning and it making people hallucinate and feel sick so we checked our detectors in the house, made sure they worked and had fresh batteries but no beeps. He had to go to a friends’ house so we parted ways and I went to bed.

This night was different, for the first time I saw my roommate in the basement, not our friend. I thought he had got home early and just walked down the stairs to talk to me, he was very social and would do that even if I was asleep so I called out to him, he ran in a different direction than my friend appeared to and when I picked up my phone to get my flashlight up my roommate was calling me and asking me to let him in since he was locked out.

I didn’t lock any doors.

At that point I was done, it was messing with my head and was getting super sick, I went to the ER and they did about 5 tests on me and couldn’t find anything. I just needed a break so i spent the night at a friends (S) house the next night. Around 2 am S got a call from L asking if I left her house, when she sent him a picture of me dead asleep on the floor he freaked out. He had heard me at the front door banging on it asking him to let me in!

I was petrified when he told me that story in the morning, part of me was glad that someone else was experiencing it and that he couldn’t think it was just me anymore but didn’t know what to do. We had a friend at the film school we went to that studied left handed literature and things like it, his girlfriend was a “witch”and we trusted him so he came over to check out the house. As soon as he stepped into the basement he walked over to the spot I saw the “apparition” in he stopped and stated that he felt super cold and very heavy. He immediately handed us some sage and an ouija board and said if we wanted to try and communicate we could. We had him check out the painting, he said there was nothing of note about it and it was just old and creepy.

We decided to use the ouija board, horrible decision I know but I wanted to find out what was messing with me and maybe try and coexist with this thing, maybe it wasn’t malevolent, maybe it was a friend?

We sat down in front of it, lit a candle and sat in the very spot it showed up all those times, went through the rules and began to talk to it, the first time, which I assume was one of my roommates messing with me made the planchet go to “666” and we thought this thing was a bust. We asked it some various questions, are you a boy or a girl, how old it was, simple questions, and I noticed L was super uncomfortable. He believed the spirit we were talking to was a friend of his that passed away and was asking it questions only she would know the answers to and it was doing very well, the ouija board was possibly the most pleasant experience we had with the supernatural in that house.

We saged the house very nicely and all left to go be with our families for thanksgiving, when I got back I had gotten a sleep mask from my girlfriend due to my sleeping/haunting issues. K and her sister was home and I had work later that night so laid down to take a nap when I heard them talking. My roommates sister said “right there?” And my roommate responded “yes, stand there” I opened up my eyes and took my sleep mask off for them to not be there, I gave my roommate a call and she was across the state bringing her sister home. I was alone in the house.

I got home from work that night creeped out by the experience earlier, I was alone again and talked with all my coworkers about it and they gave me some advice on how to coexist with ghosts, don’t acknowledge and if you do, be kind. I didn’t even fall asleep this time when I saw a hand creep around the corner of the staircase, for a visual the staircase was technically two, one went down (straight) to the backdoor, the other turned left at that landing and went to the basement, that landing is where the hand was stemming from. It then curled its fingers around the bannister and showed its face, imagine Joe the Cave Troll from the Impractical Jokers movie but greener and super veiny. I was done, I ran at the stairs where this thing was standing, told it to leave, placed salt on the stairs and around my bed before going to bed.

I contacted C, he recently told me that his mother was a “witch” and she gave us a spell to recite and how to get this ghost out. We opened all the windows and doors, he began reciting the spell and walking around the house with the sage trying to push this thing out, for one of the first times I opened up the attic door and as he went in, the sage went out. He came down the stairs and relit it but I decided to join him to see why it went out, there wasn’t a draft up there or anything so it was really odd.

I walked around and saw two mirrors facing each other which I now know could be seen as a “portal” we broke it (turned the mirrors around) and kept walking around, we heard a loud bang from the basement followed by smaller bangs. As if the window down there (it opened upwards kinda like a Delorean’s doors) had slammed all the way open, hit the ceiling, fell back down and bounced a little bit. We went down there and that window was now closed. We went up to the painting that was down there and the smoke from the sage immediately started pillowing off in the opposite direction. I brought the painting outside and left it there. After that I moved back upstairs, soon after that L moved out.

We tried talking to multiple paranormal “experts” and no one wanted to come check it out, or landlord had made a one off comment about someone possibly dying in the house, or that someone was transported to the hospital from the house where they died. If anyone has any idea what we dealt with I’d love to hear your theories!