People Shared 25+ Spooky Stories That Can Make Even the Bravest Hearts Shiver

Do you remember how we all gathered together at night when we were kids and started to tell spooky stories? Dark figures, strange encounters, haunted houses, mysterious whispers. It’s been a while since then, and we may believe in the paranormal or not. But no matter how old we are, these stories always excite our imagination and give us shivers down our spine.

We at Bright Side selected the most interesting and intriguing ones. So fasten your seat belts and get ready to dive deep into the unknown.

• When my grandparents bought their house for their family of 10, my grandpa found a fake wall upstairs. He tore it down and behind it, there were children’s clothes and play toys, almost like they walled off the room in a hurry. My mom told me stories of when she was sitting in her room and hearing something circling the walls around her that sounded like wallpaper being torn. My cousins also have stories of hearing footsteps coming up the stairs and stopping outside their door in the middle of the night. I still don’t go upstairs at their house because it’s always cold and I get weird vibes up there. Even in my adult life, I have had scary dreams that take place in their upstairs. © D***Rubnuts / Reddit

• My daughter lived in an old dorm with no elevator. She was in the stairwell one night, climbing up to her room (3rd floor, if I recall). She heard someone behind her, also climbing the stairs. She says she definitely heard footsteps and just assumed someone was close behind her. She didn’t really think much about it, but when she got to her floor and opened the door to the hallway, she turned around and the stairwell was empty. © wanttoplayball ​/ Reddit

• I was carrying my son from the bathroom to his bedroom. I glanced in my bedroom as I passed and thought I saw a man sitting on my bed. I assumed my eyes/the shadows were playing tricks and said nothing — then my son asked, “Who’s the old man sitting on your bed, mommy?” © DeeAisha / Twitter

• My mom used to clean the house of an elderly couple. They didn’t have any kids, so their house was empty, aside from them. The husband passed away and about a week after the service we were at their house cleaning. I was in their bedroom and my mom was in their bathroom. I had my back turned to the bed and off to my left was a mirror that they had that was facing the bed. While cleaning, I kinda half-turned and momentarily looked into the mirror and saw the lady’s deceased husband standing next to the bed and looking down at it. He then looked up at me through the mirror so I quickly turned to look at their bed and he was gone. Really freaked me out at the time and I quickly joined my mom in the bathroom. © indigo-10 ​/ Reddit

• When I was about 10, 4 of our cousins lived with us, and I had 2 siblings so that means there were 7 of us. We were in the family room sitting in a circle playing a game. My parents were out doing whatever adult errands they had that day. We all heard the voice of my grandma calling out “Zachary!” (one of my cousins was named Zach). No one heard my parents come home and they didn’t mention they would be getting our grandma so we all ran out of the room to greet her. We quickly realized my parents were not home, and our grandmother wasn’t there either. We even went outside to check and there was no one in our neighbor’s yards either. We were baffled. It was one of many paranormal instances in that house, but this one was experienced by 7 people. © RockyMtnRivulets / Reddit

• It was at an all-girls’ school, and it was the habit of many girls to sit out in the hall with their laptops, probably because the Wi-Fi was better. My daughter would hear them chatting until all hours of the night, and when it got annoying in the middle of the night, she would sometimes go out and ask them to move to another hall. More than once she’d go out to quiet them and there would be no one there. © wanttoplayball / Reddit

• I grew up in a big old house. One night my little brother and I slept in my sister’s room on her floor (kind of like a Friday night sleepover when we were kids) when we woke up the next morning the mirror from her bedroom wall had been taken off and was now between me and my brother. I woke up staring into my reflection. I still get the chills when I think about all the stuff myself, my friends, and my family saw there. Including the ghost of an old man that was seen 3 times in my bedroom, once by myself. © Chemical_Robot / Reddit

• I thought I was dreaming. I must have been barely 5 years old. I woke up and someone was tapping my head. I looked up, and my grandma was staring at me with the scariest creepiest smile on her face. I flung myself away, looked back up, and she was gone. © RedeRules770 / Reddit

• One day my mom was cleaning my little brother’s room while we were at school and every single one of his electronic toys turned on all at once. 2 of them did not have batteries in them. She was so freaked out she had us “camp out” in the living room for 3 days cause she didn’t want my brother alone in his room. Up until we moved, that would occasionally happen. Either one or 2 toys at a time. © LameGhost / Reddit

• I currently live in a haunted house. I’ve heard voices, footsteps, lights have been turned on/off, one of the ghosts has a thing for silverware. But the strangest/scariest experience I had was the first night I spent in the house. I wasn’t finished moving in, there were boxes everywhere, I didn’t even have my mattress up there yet. I was sleeping on an old futon mattress, watching a video on my phone when I got the pins & needles feeling of my feet falling asleep. Except it wasn’t on my feet, it was on the top of my head in the shape of a hand. I said, “Good night,” turned off my light, and tried to sleep. When I woke up my closet door was ajar, but other than that everything was otherwise untouched. I guess whoever my unseen roommate is, just wanted to check out who I was on my first night. © mrttenor / Reddit

• I was staying at my grandparent’s for the summer when I was 14. It was 11 p.m. and I was thirsty. So I went out to the kitchen and I see who I thought was my granddad sitting at the table eating a sandwich. I say hello, grab a glass of water, and head back to my room. My grandfather comes out of his room and asks who I was talking to. I turn around and no one was there. It freaked me out and still does to this day. © Lucanthethird / Reddit

• At the time I was around 14, I’d asked my dad to wake me up early that morning at about 5 a.m. because I had some work to get done. One morning, I was woken up, and I flung my legs over the side of my bed. I felt a tug on both of them. I thought, at the time, that it was just my dad trying to get me to hurry up. I reached over to pick up my phone and turned it on, it was 3:30 a.m. and I looked over at the black figure I assumed was my dad — it was gone. © tom-evvans / Reddit

• For the last decade or so I have had recurring dreams of a small town in a cold, rural place in the Northern US. Probably Minnesota or Michigan. It has a specific smell, and I know the people there. These dreams have a specific feeling, almost like a flavor, and sometimes I wake up without remembering the dream but I know I’ve been there... I’m afraid that one day I’m going to find this place, and I won’t be able to get out of there alive. © luckygiraffe / Reddit

• Our hospital was renovating our ICUs and moved us into the pediatric floor for several months. They converted a playroom into a patient room. We had 2 separate patients on different occasions in that room ask, “Where did the little boy playing next to my bed go?” © unpopular_celebrity ​/ Reddit

• We had one staff elevator in the hospital that went straight downstairs to the morgue. It would randomly come to our floor and open and close with no one in it. © CaitRelate ​/ Reddit

• I was standing with my mom in line at IHOP, waiting to pay, when I get a little dizzy, and I hear a voice that sounded distant say, “It’s starting to get cold in here.” I turned to my mom and said, “What’d you say?” and she tells me she didn’t say anything but was just thinking that it was starting to get cold. © f*lXXmeoww / Reddit

• When I was in elementary school, during an English lesson, our teacher asked us to write scary stories. One girl wrote a story about taking pictures with a Polaroid and finding her dead grandpa in the picture. The teacher said that her story was too dark and asked why she would make that up. Well, the girl brought the picture in. My teacher took the photo, looked at it, and went white. She sped walked out of the room. I wish I got to see the picture but I didn’t. © G**slonley ​/ Reddit

• I was like 10 or 11. I had a weird episode of sleepwalking where I “woke up” out by the school I was going to at the time. Naked. In the middle of fall. Everything around was weird and red and wobbly. It still looked like my town, but it was just completely wrong. Red and black everywhere, nobody out on the street, all the lights off. And I felt something on the back of my neck. I walked back to my house and tried waking up my dad. Then, I actually woke up. By his bed. And my feet were dirty. © ih8pkmn / Reddit

• We had a patient who was a young adult who recently passed in the ICU. Shortly after that, patients would constantly ask about the young man in the corner of the room in the room where he died, and they still do. © Tay0909 / Reddit

• Nursing home. Old lady with dementia had been telling me regularly about the ugly man in black clothes who visits often. She said he does nothing except stare at her from the door with a vacant look on his face. © SilverfishAnarchy / Reddit

• Several years ago when my son was young I was sitting at the computer doing some work when I heard him wake up. He made the tiny whimpering sound and the typical toddler, pathetic sounding cry/moan “Mommmyyyyy.” So I jumped up to get him. Then I remembered my son was not home. He had been at a sleepover with my parents. (We lived in a slightly older house, built in the 1940s. There are a few weird things that happened there.) © Cellophaneflours / Reddit

• My mom’s dad was never a great dad. But she knew that he did really love her. He divorced my grandmother. But he would always stop by on my mom’s birthday and get her something. The last time my mom saw her dad was on her 14th birthday — he died sometime later that year. But she swears up and down, that on the morning of her 15th birthday, while she was brushing her hair, that this little music box that he bought her on her 14th birthday started to play on its own. It only played the first 6 or 7 notes and then stopped, but she swears it had to be her dad wishing her happy birthday. © arin-orrison / Reddit

• When my cousin and I were 14/15, we both got to know a site where a “spirit” would answer all your questions. My cousin knew you could type the answer over the question without the other person knowing and wanted to use it to trick me. I didn’t know the trick myself and got a bit suspicious after all of the things I asked were answered correctly, so I asked it to show a sign of it being present. My cousin jokingly typed “Turn around,” so we both did, and only a few seconds later one of the plastic birds my parents had at the time started moving its wings. We stopped using the site right after that. © linkedmemories ​/ Reddit

• My father was in the hospital, dying. My immediate family was there in the room with him, except for my 3-year old nephew. One of our friends had taken him to an empty room down the hall to try and get him to go to sleep in one of the empty beds. My father passed away around 2 AM that morning, and at that exact time the friend told us that my nephew sat straight up in bed all of a sudden and said clearly, “Bye Grandpa.” © mollyjo2518 / Reddit

• Back in the ’90s, I was in the living room playing a game on the computer. My dad came in and talked to me for about a minute then went back to his room to go to bed. So I went back to playing the game. A few minutes later I get this feeling that something was looking at me. I look up and in the same spot where my dad was standing was a form in the shape of my dad. I could see through it. It looked like iridescent smoke. I was startled and it immediately disappeared. © bur1sm / Reddit

• My dad recently died. One time during dinner my sister-in-law’s kid tells her my dad told him she will be able to fix up her house. 2 weeks later there is a fire on their street and their house is one of the ones that got ruined, afterward, they are sent money to build a new house by their relatives. © angelof***tism / Reddit

• We had some weird things happen when we first moved into our house last year. I was the only one that saw or heard anything and my husband didn’t believe me. Anyway, one night he’s in his gaming room and I’m in the living room. He comes out and says, “Nice try, I know it was you.” I had no idea what he was talking about. It was nighttime and I was relaxing watching TV. He said I was outside his window tapping on it. Over and over. It was not me. © chartito / Reddit

Which of these stories frightened you the most? Have you ever experienced something similar yourself? Let us know in the comments. There’s always enough space for one more spooky story right here.