r/Unexplained

I stayed up really late last night. I was puttering around and noticed a white envelope with gold foil inside laying on my kitchen counter. It was opened, nothing written on the outside, and appeared empty. I was going to toss it, but it wasn't empty. Inside was my late grandfather's social security card (born 1919) and one of my high school senior pictures. (I graduated high school in 1993).

My grandfather passed from cancer in 1996 at their cabin in lake Tahoe, although they mostly lived in Palm springs at the time. My grandmother continued to live in the same house in Palm springs until she passed in 2024. I have never lived with my grandparents, and they never lived with me. I bought and moved into my current house in 2020. My grandma, although alive, was old and frail and was never able to visit us in this house.

I'm at a complete loss. Universes colliding?!!?

I can't decide if I'm delusional or seeing ghosts. For context, I am an eleven year old girl and for probably a year and a half now I've been seeing things in the corner of my eye. It's always people. It's only two that always show up but there can be multiple.

There's a woman in a white dress that I see in a flash everytime my mom drives by a specific spot on a specific highway with me in the back or the car. There is also a tall shadow figure of a man that stands hovering at my doorway. I have a chair that I spin on and a view directly into a hallway from my room and he shows up every time I turn on the chair.

But the weird thing is that neither show up when I actively look for them and neither have any vibes they give off.

I don't see any other specific ones but I do see others.

Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched (mostly at night) for no reason and recently I've been smelling smells out of nowhere from no real direction.

I don't have a history of anything paranormal or have any connections to it until now. I've heard that paranormal activity could be upped during puberty??

There are two instinces (sorry if I spelled that wrong) that a ghost (I think) has talked to me. (A woman yelled my name at me three times and I once heard a boy calling for help also three times.)

Please, people who are smarter and know more than me, tell me what could be going on and what I can do about it.

I am a Texan who has been visiting Sedona for the past 5 years, it’s a beautiful place and an amazing place to visit, but I have 2 stories to tell. 2 years ago I visited Sedona for a random summer trip with family, we like to go off roading so we brought our can-am’s. We explored different trails and areas of it and nothing much came of that. We were all coming back from the devils bridge trail late at night, entering the neighborhood of our Airbnb, driving and enjoying the music and the cruise, when I turn a corner and see 2 figures in front of a for sale sign of a property in the neighborhood, these 2 figures seemed to be woman who had to be around 7-8 feet tall, freakishly pale and skinny, as skinny as twigs, wearing dresses and large straw hats. Obviously I freak out and yell. My friend who was next to me looked up and saw the same thing. We come back to the cabin and explain what happened to our family who doesn’t seem to believe us. 2 other family members take a can-am and go check and come back and see nothing. The following morning, we see nothing again. To this day we still don’t know how to explain what we saw, there’s no way they were mannequins because I clearly saw them move.

This second story takes place on this 4th of July. We come and visit Sedona again with the same family and friends, we take our can-am’s out to the broken arrow trail, just before we head up to the top, I see an older lady sitting on a rock, she’s wearing a blue dress and holding a brown bag. She seems lonely so I ask her if she’s ok and she says yes, I offer her a water and she happily takes it. Nothing else comes of that and we head up, the whole time on the way up, no one other than a black can-am piloted by one guy passes us, he’s completely alone, we think nothing of it. Eventually we make it to the top and find another family to Hang out with, we sit there for a bit, talking about life and Sedona. We eventually head all the way back down and head home. We’re all sitting in the living room and talking about the day, when the topic of this lady somehow becomes the talk of the conversation. Half of the family says the lady ended up at the top with us, they all ask her how she got up here but all she does is laugh and slime when they ask. Keep in mind, we didn’t see any vehicles coming up, not a single one. So we’re all here discussing how she could’ve possibly gotten up there, no one has an explanation, there’s no possible way she could’ve made it up there walking, and no way she got a ride from anybody else.(I forgot too add that the lady claimed to be waiting for her daughter who was walking the trail,she said this to one of my family members, only one, why would a daughter bring her mother to sit while she walks the trail, and where was the daughter while we were up there with the other family.) has anyone experienced a story similar to these, or have an explanation to these stories. I apologize if the story seems like it’s missing details but I wrote it the best I could.

My husband and I have a 4 month old but we get out of the house often with him. We’ve been to baseball games, golf, bowling, dinner at friends houses, etc..He’s a really chill baby and we have a great time doing stuff with him.

We had plans to go to our friends, we will call Tom and Sarah for the sake of the story, for a Fourth of July thing today. No fireworks or heavy drinking. Just a small gathering with maybe 5-8ish people we know well.

All day yesterday I could not shake the feeling that we shouldn’t go. Not like a oh it’ll be too much with the baby kinda feeling but a I think something terrible is going to happen feeling.

As a new mom I have typical mom anxiety but nothing like how I felt yesterday but I knew my husband was excited to go so I didn’t say anything or show any concern about going. I figured I’d wait until today and if I still felt bad about it I’d say something closer to time to leave our house.

Last night we were laying in bed about to fall asleep and I’m still thinking how much I don’t feel good about going to Tom and Sarah’s the next day. Out of nowhere my husband asks if I’m still awake. I said yeah kinda and he says “I don’t know why but we can’t go to Tom and Sarah’s house tomorrow. Like my body is saying it’s not an option”

So of course we are staying home today and I feel completely content and happy but hearing him say that last night after spending all day feeling the same way sent chills down my body.

My husband is a very rational not anxious parent and him saying something like that is unusual for him so I know he was feeling some kinda way.

Anyway who knows if anything would have happened if we went but I’m glad knowing we’re listening to our intuition. Hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th of July!

I found this place because I wanted to tell someone about something that happened to me tonight. It was the first paranormal experience of my life.

I was lying in my bedroom, getting ready to sleep. My room was dark, and my bedroom door was closed. My door is always closed. Even if someone opens it and leaves it open, I'll get up and close it. I never leave my bedroom door open, and I never sleep with it open. My mother's bedroom is right next to mine.

I heard my mother leave her room and go downstairs to the kitchen to get some water. After she opened her bedroom door, I heard a faint sound coming from my own door, almost as if someone had lightly touched the wood with their fingertips. I assumed it was my mother resting her hand on my door to check whether I was asleep by listening for any sounds from inside my room.

About a minute later—I'm still getting goosebumps just writing this—I heard the unmistakable metallic creaking sound that my bedroom door handle makes when it's being pushed down. It wasn't a quick movement. It was lowered as slowly as possible. Then my door opened just a tiny bit.

The light from the hallway shone into my room.

My mother sometimes does this to see if I'm asleep. She slowly presses the handle down, opens the door slightly, peeks inside, and if I'm still awake, she'll come in to chat or simply say good night. So at first, I thought it was completely normal.

I said, "Mom?"

There was no answer.

The door didn't open any further.

Then I called out louder, "MOM!"

I immediately jumped out of bed, opened the door all the way, and looked into the hallway.

No one was there.

My mother was downstairs in the kitchen. I could hear her getting water.

There is nothing in the hallway that could create enough airflow or air pressure to move my door. Afterward, I tested the door myself. I made sure it was fully latched and tried pushing it open, but it wouldn't budge. I also know exactly what my door handle sounds like—I clearly heard the metallic creak of the handle being pressed down.

There is an air conditioner inside my room, but it blows from inside the room, not from the hallway, so it couldn't have pulled the door open from the outside.

I genuinely cannot find any logical explanation for what happened, and I'm honestly terrified.

I've thought about every possible explanation. I considered the door latch and everything else, but I've lived in this room for 25 years, and nothing like this has ever happened before.

I even asked myself if the bathroom door might have been open. It wasn't—it was closed. The bathroom has a small window, but even if air had somehow come through it—which is unlikely because there's no wind here during the summer—it still couldn't have opened my bedroom door because the bathroom isn't directly facing my room; it's off to the side.

Whatever this was, and whatever the reason it happened, it seemed to wait until my mother went downstairs. I'm still in my room now. The lights are on, and I have goosebumps all over my body.

If you have any ideas about what might have happened, please ask me anything. And if you have any advice on how I can protect myself or feel safer tonight, I'd really appreciate it.

My mom thinks I must have accidentally left my door slightly open, but I ran downstairs with my legs shaking and told her exactly what happened as soon as it happened. She doesn't believe me, but I genuinely experienced this. I honestly wish I never had.

I genuinely can’t believe I’m writing this and I’m not even sure if this is the right place to post, but I can’t even truly explain how or why this happened to me

A while back, I had one of those experiences that makes you question whether you’re actually an intelligent adult or just three raccoons in a trench coat pretending to be one.

I went to Whole Foods to grab a few things. Nothing unusual. I checked out, loaded my groceries into the car, and placed my wallet on the front seat while I returned the shopping cart.

For reasons I still can’t explain, my brain apparently considered the errand complete the moment I put the cart away.

As I’m getting back in the car, I suddenly realized I didn’t have my wallet.

Cue immediate panic.

I ran back into Whole Foods, and of course, the cart was gone.

I ran around the store looking into people’s shopping carts and retracing my steps like a detective in a low-budget crime drama.

At one point I actually gave up, went back to my car, and considered accepting my fate. Convinced my entire life was gone: Driver’s license, debit cards, credit cards, cash, everything… I went to go look for my phone so I could cancel all my cards.. and that’s when panic set in all over again. MY PHONE. Fuck. It was in my wallet so…. I run back into Whole Foods.

I’m running around, looking in peoples carts, looking absolutely crazy and hysterical when I finally gave up again because I have cold groceries in the car and start heading towards the exit. (I’ve already alerted employees at this point who have said something overhead, are also on the lookout & will call me if someone turned it in).

As I’m about to head out, right in front of me is a man heading toward checkout with groceries on top of what looked suspiciously like my wallet.

It was my wallet.

I didn’t even hesitate. I literally snatched it so fast, gave him a dirty look and ran to my car.

But the saga wasn’t over.

During all the chaos, I somehow misplaced my car key.

Now I am standing by my car having recovered my wallet and phone only to realize I couldn’t leave because I no longer had the key to my car.

The manager, the lead on duty, and several employees helped me search for it.

Eventually an employee who had been collecting carts found my key lying on the ground somewhere.

The entire ordeal lasted about 25 to 30 minutes and took years off my life.

I told myself I had learned my lesson.

I had not.

Fast forward to today.

Same Whole Foods.
Same wallet.
Same phone inside the wallet.

I loaded my groceries into the car with my wallet still on the front seat, returned my shopping cart, got back in my car, and drove away.

Again.

Ten minutes later, I experienced the exact same realization.

“No phone.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh NO.”

I turned around immediately and drove back expecting to relive the previous nightmare screaming FUCK at the top of my lungs.

Fortunately, this time someone had turned it in to customer service instead of trying to steal it.

Ironically, I had to face the same lady & cart guy who helped me the first time. I can’t even explain the look on their faces when they realized it was me.

But thankfully, I had my wallet back.

Nothing was missing so the silver lining is that there are still genuinely kind and honest people in the world.

Needless to say, I will now be investing in a crossbody bag, a lanyard, an AirTag, and possibly a court order preventing me from setting my wallet down in the front seat ever again.

when i was younger a lady in a haik always visited me at night, everything was calm and she was pretty chill until one day i woke up late at night and she was coming to me, it nevèr happened before, i felt she held ill intentions toward me, i shrinked back in the caorner watching her come to me, then when she got to the end of the bed, i knew i had to do smthg so i jumped out of the bed a light the room, i stayed a bit up then turned off the lights to check, once the room was dark the lady was looking at me still on the end of the bed. i nvr feared for my life more than that day

There's been a lot of posts about this and a lot of non-believers. So perhaps someone could explain exactly what it is I heard.

First time was in Melbourne around 2013. Kids and I were woken up at 3am to an extremely loud metallic grating sound that repeated over a few minutes. The bedroom window pane shook and I could feel the vibrations from the bed. It was metallic, grating, high pitched and explosive. Don't know how better to describe it. It scared the crap out of us. Wasn't an earthquake. Was coming from above somewhat. We lived nowhere near water or airstrips.

Fast forward to June 2026, Perth.

Interrupted at dinnertime with loud sounds like a large heaven's hammer was banging on the steel roof in a rolling and repeatedly explosive manner. Also extremely loud, the house also shook each time and we could all feel the vibrations. Opened the windows on all sides and it seemed just as loud on each. Nothing outside out of the ordinary. No wind that day either, although close to beach. Checked, no earthquake that day. Went on for awhile. Kids freaked out so I called the police. As soon as hung up the phone, I realized the phenomenon had stopped, so I call back to tell them it stopped. Thinking back, we all freaked out more when the sound stopped during the call to the cops. Coincidence?

What could it be. The first sounded like the Decepticons landed. The second sounded like an angry washing machine trying to devour our house.

I recently moved into a new house with my family, and something happened this morning that genuinely shook me. For context, I leave for work around 3:00 AM, so everyone in my house is always asleep by the time I’m getting ready. This morning I took a shower, got dressed, and the house was completely dark except for the dim bathroom light upstairs. As I was finishing up upstairs, I suddenly heard someone cough downstairs. Not just a little throat clear it was a distinct cough. The thing that terrified me was that it didn’t sound like anyone in my family. I’ve lived with them long enough to recognize their voices and coughs, and this sounded completely different.
I froze. I stood there for a few seconds, barely breathing, trying to listen. Then I heard what sounded like slight movement downstairs. It wasn’t loud, but enough to convince me I hadn’t imagined the cough. At that point I started yelling, “Who’s there?” over and over.
No answer. I worked up the nerve to go downstairs anyway. I turned on every light I could, opened every room, checked every closet, and even opened the front door to see if anyone had run out. Nothing. Then I checked on every single member of my family. Every one of them was in bed, dead asleep.We have security cameras facing the front of the house, so I checked those before leaving for work. Nobody walked up to the house, nobody left, nothing looked unusual at all. The only place I didn’t check was the backyard because our back door blocks outside noise really well, so I figured if someone had been out there, I probably wouldn’t have heard them coughing from inside.
Now I’m sitting at work replaying it over and over in my head. I know houses make weird noises, but this wasn’t a creak or pipes settling. It sounded exactly like a person coughing, followed by what I thought was someone moving around. I’m a pretty rational person, so I’m trying not to jump to paranormal conclusions. My brain keeps going back to more realistic possibilities,maybe someone was outside near a window, maybe I misjudged where the sound came from, or maybe someone somehow got in and left before I got downstairs but none of those explanations completely make sense to me. Has anyone experienced something like this after moving into a new house? What would you do in my situation? I’m honestly pretty paranoid now, especially knowing I’ll be leaving at 3 AM again tomorrow.

I'm posting this to another community to attempt at gaining more insight to my current dilema.

I barley post or use reddit, I only really have this account because I was bored a few years ago and wanted to take a look at the happenings on here. But I assure you, I am truthful. I am a teenage girl living near Sydney Australia. I live a relatively normal life, two parents and two siblings, private school and I hang out with friends often. My mum is a bit of a control freak and she wanted my room to be rearranged, which I was totally okay with as I don't really mind and arguing with her is pointless. This rearrangement brought on the want of removing the built in wardrobe by the door. Again, I was not too bothered by this. My father went about taking it out, he only really just bashed out the shelves and built a faux floor so it would be level with the rest of my room. My father is a tradesman so he was the best of us to go about this. Though when he was working on the top of the wardrobe he knocked a hole in the ceiling above where my bed and dresser are currently.

There is one medium sized hole above my dresser and four long, thin ones above my bed. Something about them throws me off. I am not a naturally anxious person, I rarely get anxiety outside of social anxiety so it is unlike me to get so irked by just some holes.

The attic is above the entire house, though most of it is inaccessible due to insulation unless you army crawl through it. I used to do this when I was much younger, thus smaller, so I'm not sure if someone full grown would be able to fit. Half of the section above my room, the space above my bed, is somewhat accessible though it would be difficult and quite uncomfortable as that is where the roof begins to slope. The other section, where the holes are not, is completely full of insulation.

At night I find myself looking up at the ceiling above my head and feeling untrusting. In the dark sometimes I see movement (the attic is very stuffy and has little to no ventilation, wind is not likely) and a few times I've thought that I could see the whites of somethings (someones?) eye/s.
I don't get dressed by my dresser anymore, instead I change infront of my wardrobe, which is a few metres away. I suppose whatever may or may not be up there would still be able to see me if they tried hard enough to change the angle of which they where looking.

I've been in the attic a few times since this started to get things for my family that are up there. The attic has always been scary as I've never been fond of the dark and not knowing my surroundings but recently I've looked closer. Some large boxes and suitcases haver been moved from one side of the attic to the other, building a sort of wall between the main cavity and the section that is above my room. I was hesitant to check so I asked my brother to by playing it off and saying that dad needed his old sailing boots (of which he does not own anymore so I knew he would have to look thoroughly). He didn't find anything behind the boxes except some one baby clothes of mine that must have fallen from a box and been kicked in that direction over the years. At least, thats what I'm hoping to be true.

Please help me, I think I'm starting to loose it. I'm sitting in my room right now and I can feel eyes on me. I feel like something is watching me.

Again, perhaps I am just paranoid or maybe it's just rats or mice or something of the sort.

Edit as I realised I may come across as someone older, I am a teenager. I am aware I have an older style of writing and a large vocabulary. I realise that it may make me come across as disingenuous. I assure you I am not. All I need is help.

Thank you for reading.

Edit 2: I was called in to work a quick half shift as one of my coworkers became ill halfway through hers, when I got home I listened to a commenters suggestion and shone my phone light into the holes to see if there was any lense refections. I did not find a camera but I did find a portable charger with an adapter that I recognise as the charger to one of my uncles cameras (he’s a photographer on the side). This makes little sense though as my uncle primarily lives in Singapore for his not photography job.

I snooped around Some closets and found one of his camera bags with only one of the three cameras supposed to be in it.

My mum spotted me doing this and come down to ask what I was looking for. I told her I was looking for an extra battery for my camera but she went ballistic. she snatched the bag and told me I ought to get my nose out of places it doesn’t belong and how since I’m so disrespectful she might as well take my camera along with all my devices.

When we got back upstairs she asked me where my camera was. She took my camera bag and dug through it, taking both my digital and film cameras. She left all of my film though.

She also threatened to take away my crutches? I have a nerve disorder and use crutches when I’m in too much pain which thankfully isn’t often so I only use the crutches about once a week. She then claimed that I’m becoming dependant on drugs (mucle relaxants and over the counter pain killers)?

i thought this was a really weird reaction.

I will climb into the attic when she leaves for work and leaves me home alone tomorrow.

Edit 3: It took a while to get the confidence to climb up into the attic but I managed to drag myself up there. A few more boxes had been added to the 'wall' that separates the section above my room. It took a while to get a few out of the way as it's quite close to the opening but once I moved two or three I crawled into the space I'd made.

The first thing I noticed is it smelt like bleach, which is weird because it didn't in other parts of the attic. I had to crawl to be able to fit but my mum is only a little bit taller than me so id assume she'd be able to fit too. My father and uncle would not be able to fit. Some of the insulation had been moved to make the space bigger, I know for a fact that this would not have been easy and would have been a long process. I pushed back some of the remaining insulation and found my uncles camera.

This camera is professional grade so no way my mum bought this for herself. I flicked through the photos on it and didn't find anything too incriminating. There was photos of the holes from the attic and my bedroom, almost as if documenting them? I'm not sure but the ones from the attic where taken before I had gotten home from school as I noticed my bags weren't in my bedroom. I did also find three containers, one of them smelt so strongly of bleach and had some sort of liquid in it that I didn't open it, one ha some of my old baby clothes in it which had previously been on the floor, and the last one had a few small trinkets. the trinkets where two keychains off my school bag, a few of my hair clips, a scrunchie and a few coins (75 cents). So that's weird.

Anyway, I decided to look through my mums room to see if she has any cameras that could have realistically been recording through the holes and I found two. I didn't know she had either of these which is strange because she usually likes to flaunt her new things.

Both of their memory cards had been removed and I couldn't find them in the closet where I'd found the cameras. I did find my own cameras as well, which i took back. I checked her bedside table and found one memory card, I put it into my camera and looked through what she had.

There was photos of me that must have been set to be taken every hour (judged by timestamps) and a few videos that must have also been scheduled. None of the photos where too bad, just either an empty room, me playing on my phone, knitting, studying. Nothing that could be classified as inappropriate. The videos where also just me doing normal things. one had a clip of a conversation with my friend on the phone, another was just me opening my window.

I will keep looking for the second card (maybe theres even more, but judging by the two cameras there has to at least be one more) and update if i find anything. If anyone has any ideas of where to look that would be a great help.