r/hauntedhouses

My name is Ashlynn and I'm 22. Ive never really known whether I believe in ghosts.That probably sounds strange considering how many times I’ve seen things I can’t explain. 

It's hard to fully convince yourself when you don't want to believe your fear was for a real reason. I've used AI to fix my babbling but Im so for real.

This story starts in western Colorado but I’ve moved more times than I can count, different cities, different states, and there seems to be one disturbing pattern I can’t shake, everywhere I go, something seems to already be there.

At first, I blamed old houses.

Then I blamed my imagination.

Then I started wondering if maybe the houses weren’t the common denominator.

Maybe I was.

The first time I noticed it, I was living somewhere that had absolutely no reason to feel haunted. It was a decent 1990s townhome in an HOA subdivision in the middle of a decent part of the city. There was no history of anyone dying there that I knew of, and I searched Google a few times just to make sure.

Nothing particularly strange about the house.

At first, it was just weird noises I couldn't seem to find the source of.

Then there were physical sensations.

One time, I was sitting on the bed with my best friend. We were probably around 9 to 12 years old. It was dark outside when, all of a sudden, the bed vibrated.

But it wasn't like the entire mattress shook.

It felt like someone or something was underneath us, dragging their hands across the bottom of the mattress and causing the springs to shake.

We both looked at each other and just sat there, eyes locked, completely frozen.

When I finally got the courage to whisper, “I’m scared,” that was it.

We booked it to my dad’s bedroom crying.

That same night, my little blue, heart shaped bedroom doorbell started going off by itself.

I thought my brother was trying to bug us until I brought it into my room. It wasn't the batteries dying. The doorbell was only a month or so old.

I ended up taking the batteries out so it would stop.

After that night, it never did it again. Not even when the batteries eventually started to die.

My friend never came over again.

But then I started seeing shadows as I got into my teen years.

Not the kind you catch out of the corner of your eye and immediately dismiss.

These were darker than the surrounding room, almost like someone was standing just outside the edge of my vision.

And every once in a while, I would get the unmistakable feeling that someone was watching me.

I honestly tried not to think about it. In some way, I convinced myself I was just losing my marbles.

Until I saw the face.

Or what I can only describe as a face.

It was white. Almost unnaturally white.

But it wasn't a quote unquote normal ghostly apparition.

I've never seen a full body.

I never saw it standing in the middle of a room.

I would only see the very top half of its head, part of a shoulder, and sometimes its fingers.

And where the face should have been, there were these strange, shadowed indentations.

Not holes.

Not empty sockets.

Just divots where features should have been, as though something had stretched a layer of pale skin tightly over a human face and the structure underneath was barely visible.

The first time I saw it, I was lying in bed. I had just turned off my TV after watching a few episodes of Malcolm in the Middle. My light was already off, and I was just moving around trying to get comfortable when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something white by my bedroom door.

It stayed there just long enough for me to realize I was looking at something that shouldn't have been there.

My wheels started turning, and I tried rationalizing what I was seeing.

I thought to myself, It was a person.

It had to be an intruder.

That's when my heart sank into my stomach.

At this point, my brother wasn't living with us anymore, and I knew my dad had been sleeping for hours already.

I remember thinking I was going to be the next true crime story.

I literally froze.

I couldn't even call out to my dad.

I just stared at it.

Then I tried blinking a few times. I even squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could, hoping maybe my eyes just hadn't adjusted to the dark yet and I was still seeing a silhouette of someone from the TV.

But it didn't blink away.

It didn't slowly fade like a lingering spot of light in your eyes would.

The longer I looked at it, the clearer it became.

It was completely still.

Only the top of a head from the upper lip and up, along with the corner of a shoulder, were visible behind the door.

It didn't move toward me.

It just looked at me.

If you can say that about something with no eyes.

And then, very slowly, it pulled back behind the door.

I remember sitting there for several seconds afterward, waiting for someone to step out.

Nobody did.

Eventually, I convinced myself I'd seen something wrong.

A trick of the light.

A piece of clothing.

Anything that would let me fall asleep.

After that, I began noticing it in other places.

I've never had consistent or frequent sightings of it, though. Sometimes it would be years before I saw it again.

It was never fully exposed.

There was always something between us.

And there was something deeply unsettling about the way it moved.

It didn't seem to accidentally appear in my peripheral vision.

It seemed to deliberately look out at me.

When I turned 19, I moved into my own house.

It had been nearly two years since its last appearance, and I'd been living there for about eight months when I saw it again.

This time, it was peeking out from a drawer on my dresser that I hadn't shut all the way.

The same pale, almost featureless head.

Peeking at me.

And then, once again, it slowly dipped back into the darkness of my dresser drawer.

It wasn't as bad seeing it at my dad's house, my grandma's house, or even at a friend's house.

But being alone was a whole different feeling.

This time, I wasn't just scared.

I was terrified.

I frantically felt around for my phone without breaking visual contact with the drawer.

I called my brother.

Over and over.

When he finally answered, I practically begged him to come spend the night with me because it was here.

I never talked about it much, but my brother knew what “it” meant.

And he was on the way.

He stayed three nights at my house with me.

So shout out to my brother Kaiden for protecting me. Lmao.

During those few nights, my brother finally saw something too.

For years, I'd been questioning my own sanity because no one else had ever heard or seen anything I did.

I had an indoor Wi Fi camera recording the living room, and it had motion detection, so it would send me a notification whenever something moved in its field of view. (ETA-I found and posted the recording in the comments.)

My brother and I were in the garage, blazing and listening to music that night. It was around 11 p.m., I think.

We were the only two people home.

When my phone suddenly gave me a motion notification, I frowned at it and then at my brother while I opened the recording.

The living room looked completely normal.

No curtains moving in a breeze.

I didn't have animals or kids.

Nothing obvious that could have triggered it.

On the counter was one of those oil scent diffusers with a small sensor night light built into it from Bath & Body Works.

I watched the recording once.

Then twice.

And I saw it.

I noticed the night light first.

It began slowly dimming.

There was no flicker.

It didn't shut off and come back on.

It simply faded down, stayed dim for a moment, and then gradually returned to its normal brightness.

Immediately afterward, something appeared at the end of the hallway.

A shadow quickly leaned out from around the corner.

Then it was gone.

I watched the recording several times after that.

The movement was too quick to make out a person, but it looked almost like someone had stepped just far enough around the corner to look down the hallway before retreating.

I showed my brother.

His eyes said it all.

He bolted right up and searched my entire house.

Every closet.

Behind every door.

He even checked inside my washer and dryer, trying to find “the creep.”

When he was satisfied with his search, he looked at me and said, “Well, Ashy, you're not a loon like we thought. Wanna go stay at my house tonight?”

We did.

He told his wife and showed her the video.

She immediately gave me some crystals and offered to sage my home for me.

And she did the next day.

She put rocks in the corners of my house, cinnamon in my windows, salt by my door, the whole nine yards.

While I lived there, nothing else happened.

I thought it was the end of it.

It wasn't.

I've moved since then.

And I've continued to see things.

Sometimes it's only a shadow.

Sometimes it's that pale shape.

A glimpse through a doorway.

A head appearing above something.

A face looking around a corner.

Never enough to see exactly what it is.

Just enough to make me wonder if I've been encountering separate spirits in different places...

or if I've been bringing the same one with me.

Because if it's the same thing, I have no idea when it started.

And I have absolutely no idea why it keeps finding me.

So I'm curious.

Has anyone else experienced what I'd call a following haunt?

Something that seemed to move with you from one home to another?

Or have you experienced an entity that never fully appeared, but seemed to watch you from just out of sight?

Because if you've seen something like this, I want to hear about it.

Especially if you've ever seen that strange, pale, almost featureless face.

Because apparently, I'm not done looking over my shoulder yet.

When I was 18 years old, I was a brand new mom — knee deep in diapers and breast milk, and severely lacking on sleep.

My baby daddy (now husband) and I had just signed the lease on our first home together in a tiny town in north Texas. The town was so small that there was just one flashing red traffic light, two gas stations, and one cop who only worked 2 nights a week. The population was well under 1000.

Our house was adorable. Pink brick, big backyard, two bedrooms and one bathroom. Perfect for our young family.
Shortly after moving in, strange things began to happen and it didn’t take long for us to realize we weren’t the only ones in the house. Over the next two years, it was clear to us that there were at least two entities in the house with us- a woman and a man.

The first incident occurred while my husband was home alone with the baby. He was sitting on the couch in the living room when he saw the light, misty shape of a woman pacing in the kitchen. He couldn’t make out her face, but he could tell it was definitely a woman wearing a long dress.

In the following weeks and months, it seemed like the activity really picked up and was focused in our daughter’s room. Every single day when I went to get my daughter out of her crib, pictures that were hung on her wall would be on the floor. The first couple of times, I chalked it up to not having enough thumbtacks holding the large painted canvases up. But even after reinforcing each painting, I’d still come in to find them all on the floor. At the time, my daughter was so young, there was no way she could have knocked them down, and my husband definitely wouldn’t have intentionally messed up her room like that.
Being a new mama bear, this activity really pissed me off. Like, fuck you, ghost. Mess with someone your own size.

The next major incident occurred when my sister and her boyfriend spent the night at our house. At the end of a long night of board games (since we were too broke to have internet or tv), they made a pallet of pillows and blankets on the floor in the living room, and my husband and I retired to our bedroom.

The way our house was set up, the living room, kitchen and dining room were in the front of the house. Then there was a long hallway leading to the bathroom and the two bedrooms, which sat directly across from each other at the end of the hallway.

The next morning, my sister and her boyfriend looked extremely tired. When we asked how they slept, my sister said “we kept waking up every time you went to the bathroom.”
Confused, I looked at my husband. “I didn’t go to the bathroom last night. Did you?”

My sister explained that they heard our bedroom door open and close, then after a short pause, the bathroom door open and close. A couple minutes later, they’d hear the bathroom door open and close, and then the bedroom door again. As if someone was leaving the bedroom, going to the bathroom, then coming back to bed. They heard this sequence at least 3 times that night.

I was breastfeeding my 6 month old at the time and I never closed our bedroom door, ever. I always left it open in case the baby woke up in the night. Our rooms were arranged so that I could just sit up in bed and see across the hall into her room.

Needless to say, this experience had us thoroughly shook. We started losing sleep, worried that every little sound was something or someone in the house, in Addie’s room. I began to feel like I was going crazy. The anxiety consumed my thoughts, day and night.

Then, one night, I woke up in the middle of the night, once again. I sat up in bed and looked toward the hallway to peer into the baby’s room. Instead of seeing the warm yellow glow of her night light, there was the black shape of a man— opaque, impenetrable black— and he was standing near the foot of my bed, blocking the glow of the nightlight. He was tall, maybe 6 feet, with broad shoulders. I couldn’t see any of his features, as he was solid black, but I got the sense that he was wearing a blazer or suit jacket which caused his shoulders to look square.

Strangely, when I saw him, I didn’t feel scared. He didn’t feel threatening or spooky like the woman did. In fact, when I realized what I was seeing, I simply rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I described the night’s events to my husband and we agreed to have the house blessed \~just\~ in case. After that, the activity stopped. We never had another experience again.

We've lived here for 22 years. An old man lived here before we did. He died out on the patio right outside son #2's room. His room is where some of this happened. We haven't had anything happen in a while but for a while there it was often, especially when the kids were little.

-Shortly after we moved in, son #1 who was four at the time, woke up and saw a shadow person in the room (now son #2's room) across the hall looking at a bulletin board on the wall. He screamed, the shadow person looked at him, then spun really fast toward him and vanished.

-Also shortly after moving in, I was in the family room when my husband walked in and said he thought he just saw me walk across the hall.

-Son #2 was coming out of his bedroom one night and saw a shadow figure standing in the living room near the front door. It vanished.

-A few times son #1 would be laying in bed and feel a hand touch him. He said he felt it shifting and felt like the hand had weight to it and was pressing down on him slightly. If he were to look up or open his eyes, the feeling would stop.

-Things used to disappear. We'd look all over the house and suddenly the thing we were looking for just appears where we had already looked or just sitting out in the open. We started asking the ghost to give them back and they'd reappear.

-My mom moved in with us in her final months. One day when we were helping her get in the house after a doctor's appointment, we heard 3 knocks on the wood back door, the storm door was locked. Four of us heard it. No one was there and the security cameras showed nothing.

-I heard the knocks on the door again about a week later and I can't remember if it was before or after my mom passed. I was alone at the time.

-My mom put her clock on the living room shelf. It stopped working the day she passed away. Her old touch lamp also started turning itself on sometimes after this.

-Son #1 was in son #2's room talking one night and brought up my mom. Son #1 felt something touch his back and when he turned around it felt like it pulled away. There was nothing there.

-At my mom's funeral my SIL's mom gave me and my siblings an angel figurine. I put it next to a picture of my mom. Sometimes the angel will turn toward her picture, looking directly at her. It is gradual. We don't see it happen at once, but we'll notice it starting to turn and after a few days it is looking right at mom.

-Mom died in June. On Christmas morning that same year, our cat found a bobby pin near the chair mom always sat in. She always had pins in her hair. I had vacuumed/swept multiple times and never found anything around that chair between June - December.

Not gonna say the exact day we went but it was in the last 2 months we went to the conjuring house in rhode island and we snuck through the woods into the backyard and we saw a grave stone in the middle of the back yard and a bunch of white chairs in a non completed circle we then kept getting close to the house and saw a shit ton on cameras and then we successfully opened the back porch door but couldnt actually get into the house. Yes non of this was a good idea. My question is since there are a ton of bad spirits there are we getting haunted by those bad spirits? I haven’t experienced anything yet.

In the year 1993, my wife and I, having celebrated just over a year of marriage, found ourselves in search of a new place to call home—a place closer to our parents' abode. Our quest led us to a peculiar rental opportunity, a trailer situated on an 80-acre old hog farm, isolated in the quiet expanse of the countryside. The only companions in this remote setting were our humble trailer and the owners' new home standing about 200 yards away. A weathered barn stood sentinel nearby, adding a rustic charm to the landscape.

 The proprietors of this rural haven were a unique duo—the lady, a skilled farrier specializing in fitting new shoes on horses, and the gentleman, a dedicated railroad worker. Their familial ensemble included two children, a 14-year-old girl, and a young lad of 12. The lady devoted much of her time to the horses in the barn, while the children reveled in the freedom of the outdoors. This was a time long before the internet and the conveniences of modern communication, a time when descriptions and connections lacked the immediacy we now take for granted.

 Not long after settling into this seemingly serene abode, I began to notice anomalies that defied explanation. It's crucial to note that my childhood had been marred by encounters with spirits, and as these inexplicable events unfolded, I found myself confiding in my wife that we might have unwittingly chosen a haunted home. While she believed in spirits, she had never personally experienced the paranormal.

 

The disturbances became incessant—nocturnal or diurnal, it mattered not; the spirits asserted their presence. Doors would slam shut, others would swing open, and cabinets would mysteriously fly open, tossing objects off the countertops. As time passed, the disturbances escalated, reaching a point where my wife was chased by a sickly raccoon into our trailer one evening. In an attempt to alleviate the situation, I set a live trap baited with cat food and, within an hour, had captured the ailing creature.

 

Confronted with the decision to spare the raccoon further suffering, I retrieved a .22 caliber handgun and, from a foot away, delivered what I believed to be a humane end. The next morning, expecting to find a lifeless creature, I was instead met with the raccoon standing calmly, appearing surprisingly healthy. Perplexed, I transported it miles away and released it, unwilling to let it linger near our home.

 

Despite the absence of contemporary technology to document these paranormal events, we adapted and lived with the strange occurrences. One particularly unsettling episode transpired as an otherworldly force seemed to settle upon the trees surrounding our home. The sound of breaking branches echoed through the night, prompting me to rush outside, only to witness an abrupt silence as soon as I stepped through the door. This bizarre phenomenon repeated twice more that night, each time ceasing upon my emergence.

 

Frustrated by the unexplainable disturbances, I resolved to approach the owners with a direct inquiry about the supernatural. In 1993, the understanding of the paranormal was not as commonplace as it is today. Nervously, I broached the subject with the lady owner, and to my surprise, she confirmed a dark history. Three individuals—an old man and his two sons—had met their demise in separate farming accidents on the property before the current owners acquired it.

 

Armed with this unsettling knowledge, the subsequent weeks were fraught with eerie incidents—lights flickering, doors slamming, and an ever-growing sense of foreboding. The property, once serene, now emanated a palpable darkness, an ominous presence that seemed to shroud everything in a sinister aura.

 

The stage was set for the chilling climax—the final night in the trailer. Built in the 70s, the trailer boasted windows on three walls in the master bedroom, beginning halfway up the wall. Accustomed to lying on the right side of the bed against the wall, we retired for the night as usual. The spirits, however, were undeterred, orchestrating a series of unsettling activities—opening doors, regardless of locks, and escalating their usual antics.

 

As we lay in the pitch-black darkness, a mere five minutes passed before an unexplained force compelled me to open my eyes. To my horror, I found myself staring out of the windows. The bed was elevated three feet above the floor. Simultaneously, my wife, who hadn't yet fallen asleep, began screaming. The bed crashed down with such force that all four legs pierced the trailer's floor.

 

As a six-foot-three military man weighing 230 pounds, I considered myself tough, but this humbling experience shattered that illusion. The instinct to let my wife go first was overshadowed by sheer panic as we crawled and struggled over each other, desperately escaping the trailer. Grabbing my keys, we ran to the truck, only to find it unresponsive, as if the battery had died. Terrified, we heard the haunting sound of breaking trees once again. 

In a moment of desperation, prayer became our refuge. After what felt like an eternity, I turned the key once more, and miraculously, the truck roared to life. Fleeing to my parents' home, we sought solace and prayed through the night, repeating the ritual for the next three nights until I secured a condo in town. Our return to the trailer, accompanied by two trucks and two trailers, was a swift retrieval mission. We gathered our belongings and never looked back. 

This harrowing experience ignited a fervor within me to delve into the mysteries of the paranormal. Over the past thirty years, I've dedicated myself to helping others haunted by the unknown. Despite my encounters with war and a tumultuous life, this remains the most terrifying event etched into my memory. Even as I conduct paranormal investigations, I steadfastly refuse to return to that accursed property.

 Dale

When I was a little kid, we lived at this house and every night I could swear around midnight I heard a sink running water. It was probably about 10 years after we moved out of the house when I was probably at my early 20s that I met the original owners who mentioned that their mother-in-law had passed away in the house and that indeed she had a ritual of going and getting a drink of water every night around midnight. Pretty freaky shit, right?