True & Real Paranoia | 7 Stories About Irrational Fear With Rain & Haunting Ambience

[00:00:26]My father died on a Thursday for weeks Afterward, I wrote that word on every mirror in my apartment. Thursday, I was terrified that the world was going to erase him, and sometimes I still am. The heart attack had taken him once. I was convinced that something was coming to take him a second time by making everybody forget that he even existed.

[00:00:49]That probably should have been the moment I realized that something was wrong. But grief doesn't frame itself as madness. It comes covertly. It whispers that you're the only person who understands what's really happening. And so I listened.

[00:01:04]I barely slept after the funeral. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him in that hospital bed, gray and still. And I could not connect the body to the man who taught me to ride a bike, fix my first car, and carried me on his shoulders when I was little. I kept waiting for my phone to ring and for him to tell me that there had been some kind of mistake.

[00:01:24]When it never happened, my mind concocted something else. I suffer from a mental disorder I'd rather not publicly disclose. But I struggle with psychosis. This was the deepest dive that I ever took. In my mind, my father had discovered something before he died.

[00:01:41]Something about the end of the world.

[00:01:44]The earth was dying, and somehow I'd been chosen to witness its destruction.

[00:01:48]But not from the ground, from the sky. I was going to grow wings.

[00:01:54]Even now, saying this out loud makes me feel sick. At the time, it was as undeniable as my own name. I would stand sideways in the bathroom mirror and study my ribs. I could feel pressure under my skin. Undeniable spasms of something trying to break free. The wings were trapped. They needed room to get their beginning. The first time I cut into my side, I cried with relief. I wasn't trying to hurt myself. I genuinely believed I was helping myself transform. Sitting there on the edge of my bathtub with blood running down my stomach, I whispered, "It's okay. I'm helping you grow. Little feathers grow." I said it like I was speaking to a baby. I made more cuts over the next few days. Then I would bandage myself, put on a blouse, and go to work. That was the true terror. I was still functioning. I answered emails, joke with co-workers, attended meetings, and when people asked how I was doing after my father's death, I'd smile and say, "I'm hanging in there."

[00:02:54]Then I would excuse myself to the bathroom, check the windows because I knew black helicopters were circling the building. I heard them. They were all part of this government program to prevent me from leaving the ground.

[00:03:06]Sometimes they were real helicopters somewhere off in the distance. Other times, there was nothing at all. My mind didn't care. Every sound was proof of these insane thoughts.

[00:03:17]They know I'm changing. They know I can escape. They're coming for me.

[00:03:23]I change my route home every day. I parked blocks away and walked because I believed I was being followed. I photographed strangers. I wrote down license plates. Once I hid behind a dumpster for nearly two hours because I thought a man in a baseball cap was watching me.

[00:03:39]He was just eating his sandwich at a diner, and I know that now. At the time, I believed he was waiting for me to reveal myself.

[00:03:47]My family was terrified. I ignored my mother's calls because I thought they had already gotten to her. My friends would come to my apartment, and I'd sat there silently, refusing to answer the door. Then I would disappear. I drove for days without any kind of destination because I thought I needed to keep moving until my wings developed. If I stopped, I'd be nabbed by the government overwatch.

[00:04:10]Then I would come back, usually somewhat normal, walk into work, make coffee, talk about the weather, all that natural human stuff.

[00:04:19]Nobody understood how I could be completely lost and still appear normal.

[00:04:24]Driving 300 m round trip between shifts without even sleeping. Honestly, I didn't understand it either.

[00:04:31]The moment everything hit the fan was this fleeting one. I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot when I saw a little girl sitting on her father's shoulders laughing. For a second, I was a child again. I was that little girl. I remembered my dad's hands, his voice, the smell of his clothes. Suddenly, the truth crashed through everything. My mind had built up. I wasn't chosen, nor was I becoming something greater. Was a daughter who couldn't accept that her father was now gone. My mind had created this world where I could grow wings because wings could take me away from the one place my father no longer existed.

[00:05:07]I sat there and screamed in the parking lot until my throat was raw.

[00:05:12]Recovery was not immediate. There were more days when I questioned what was real and moments of fear and confusion.

[00:05:19]But eventually I stopped waiting for those wings. I got with a therapist. I got into a treatment program. Even took medication for quite some time.

[00:05:28]The scars on my sides became these thin white lines where feathers would never grow. Sometimes I run my fingers over them when I miss him. I was willing to do anything to see my father again. And I had the receipts to prove it.

[00:06:06]My father has kept a single bullet in his bedside table for as long as I can remember. It sat in the back corner of the drawer among old receipts, a flashlight with dead batteries, and a pair of reading glasses that he never even wore anymore. It wasn't hidden exactly, but it wasn't displayed either.

[00:06:22]It was simply just there.

[00:06:25]When I was a kid, I found it while I was snooping around his room.

[00:06:29]"Dad," I asked, holding it between my fingers. "Why do you have a bullet?" He looked up from the newspaper, saw what I was holding, and his expression changed.

[00:06:39]Not fear, not anger, something much harder to identify, a kind of exhaustion. He took it from me gently and said, "Somebody gave it to me." And that was that. I asked, "Who?" He told me a client and I asked why. He looked away and said, "Because he was sick and not in a way that I could treat."

[00:07:03]Then he put the bullet back in the drawer and never spoke about it again.

[00:07:07]For most of my life, I assumed it was just another strange adult mystery.

[00:07:11]Every family has them, of course. Little pieces of history that children recognize as important, but don't really understand why. An old photograph that nobody can explain. the name everybody avoids at Thanksgiving, the scar somebody got before you were born.

[00:07:27]It wasn't until 5 years ago, sitting in my parents' kitchen after a few drinks, that I finally learned the real story.

[00:07:33]And I immediately wish that I hadn't. My father was a dermatologist for nearly 40 years. He saw thousands, most of them being normal people with normal concerns, rashes, moles, suspicious spots, things that could be diagnosed and then treated. But one patient became convinced that my father had ruined his life. The man claimed he had this bizarre unnamed skin condition. He believed my father had diagnosed him with it years earlier and had prescribed an experimental drug that didn't exist.

[00:08:05]There was just one problem. None of this was true. There was no diagnosis. There was no drug. There was no treatment. My father had never written the prescription to the man that he described. He never even treated this guy. He just kind of showed up one day with the whole fake history to his memory. He truly believed it. The guy became obsessed with proving my father had poisoned him with some secret medication and then covered it up. He filed a lawsuit. He spent thousands of dollars chasing a case that no evidence was even behind it. And he lost. It ruined his life for a time. It had to.

[00:08:40]Most people would have moved on, right?

[00:08:42]But this guy did not. Not long after the case ended, my father received a letter at his office. It was a threat. It was detailed enough that the police became involved immediately.

[00:08:54]Reports were filed, statements were taken, and the officers went to speak with the man directly. For a little while, everybody thought that would be in fact the end of it. A few days after police visited him, the office staff arrived in the morning and found this basket sitting up against the front door. A homemade fruit basket. No postage, no return address. It had simply been left there overnight. The basket was addressed to my father. And on top of the fruit was a single bullet.

[00:09:22]Next to it was this handwritten apology letter. No signature, just a bizarre apology that somehow made the entire thing more unsettling than it already was. A threat would have made sense.

[00:09:34]Anger would have made sense. An apology with the bullet was something else entirely, though. Of course, the staff called the police immediately. The basket was taken as evidence.

[00:09:43]Investigators knew exactly who had left it, but proving intent was another matter. The message was clear enough, though. The man knew my father worked there. He could walk right up to his door, and if he so desired, he could shoot him dead right there.

[00:09:59]At this point, my father started becoming a lot more curious. He watched the parking lot when he left work. He checked his mirrors while driving home.

[00:10:07]The office staff became way more aware of every strange phone call and every unfamiliar face sitting far too long in the waiting room. Then the man found me.

[00:10:17]At the time, I was a teenager and played competitive golf. I'd done well in a local tournament and my name appeared in the sports section of the newspaper.

[00:10:27]That was all he needed. A month after the fruit basket, another letter arrived. The man wrote that he'd seen my name in the newspaper. He knew exactly where I'd be playing next. tournament start times were publicly available. He knew exactly when I would be there and what I looked like.

[00:10:43]That was the moment my father stopped seeing it as a threat against himself.

[00:10:47]It had now become a threat against his son. The tournament still happened, but it wasn't normal. What should have been a quiet Saturday morning with parents carrying folding chairs and kids warming up on the driving range now had police officers walking the entire property, eyes alert.

[00:11:04]A nurse that worked for my father happened to be married to a local detective. And that detective stayed with us nearly the entire day. I remember this plain closed guy following us around the entire game, but nobody told me why.

[00:11:18]At the time, I thought he was just a family friend hanging around and no idea he was watching the trees, the parking lot, the crowd. Had no idea my father was watching every stranger who looked at my direction.

[00:11:30]There was a man somewhere nearby who believed that I was connected to a conspiracy that existed only in his mind. The police eventually located him in the tournament parking lot. He was actually there. Thankfully, he wasn't armed though. They arrested him before anything else happened and eventually he was committed to a psychiatric hospital for all kinds of treatment.

[00:11:51]This was nearly 15 years ago now. That restraining order is still active and as far as we know, he disappeared afterward.

[00:11:59]No more letters, no more visits, no more fruit baskets left in the dark. But the bullet was enough. Dad kept it for years. After everything that happened, after all the fear and all the years that followed, he couldn't just let it go. It was a great reminder and could serve as wonderful evidence one day.

[00:12:18]Throwing away a bullet is easy, but forgetting the person who handed it to you is a lot harder.

[00:12:46]About 7 years ago, my husband and I moved up north to a small rural town and rented out this little cottage near the lake. It feels like a dream. We spent summers at the beach and winters ice fishing. We became super close with our neighbors almost immediately after moving in in March. And within a few months, it felt like we'd really found our forever home. But there are things about the cottage that immediately made us uncomfortable.

[00:13:10]Every room has locks on the outside of the door. Every bedroom has a deadbolt on the outside. Then we took notice of the blinds. There are small holes cut into living room and bedroom blinds.

[00:13:22]Once we placed our furniture, we realized they lined up perfectly with the couch in bed. My husband joked that maybe the previous tenant cut them so we could see outside while sitting down, but neither of us really believe that in the moment. When spring arrived, we go to clean out the little bunky behind the cottage so that we can use it for some storage. The second we open up the door, the smell hits us. Dog waste, fur, filth covering the floor.

[00:13:49]And that is the day that we properly met our neighbors.

[00:13:53]They come over and explain that the previous tenant was a complete nightmare. He lived there with his wife and young child, but nobody ever really saw them. They only heard him screaming inside the house. He had a small dog that he kept chained outside at the bunky year round. The neighbors eventually would call services and thankfully the dog was removed and rehomed.

[00:14:14]When we mentioned the locks and the blinds, they didn't seem too surprised.

[00:14:18]They tell us that he was always suspected that he was abusive, and the locks were only reinforcing that fear.

[00:14:24]They also explained that he constantly had strange people coming and going, had major problems with the landlords, and was eventually evicted. It's unsettling, but life moves on. We replace the blinds, remove the locks, try to make the cottage ours now. Fast forward to summer.

[00:14:42]One weekend, we're getting ready to spend the day at the beach. My husband runs to the store to grab some snacks.

[00:14:47]since he'd only be gone for a few minutes. He leaves through the mudroom, shutting the screen door, but leaving the main door wide open. I'm inside changing into my bathing suit, packing up our things when I hear a vehicle pull up into the driveway. Obviously, I assumed it was him and walk out into the living room to look outside, but it isn't. It's a black BMW with dark tinted windows and is parked in the driveway. I freeze and watch it. Nobody gets out.

[00:15:13]After a minute or so, the car slowly starts moving forward.

[00:15:18]We have two driveways, one on either side of the house. So, I walk into the bedroom and look out the other. The BMW has now pulled into that driveway and is just sitting there. My stomach drops.

[00:15:30]Whoever this is isn't lost. They seem to be checking the house. I finish getting dressed quickly and try to convince myself there's some explanation, right?

[00:15:40]Something to make this all normal. Maybe my husband invited somebody over. Maybe it's just one of the neighbors. Then the driver's side door opens. A huge muscular man I've never seen before steps out and starts walking quickly toward the cottage and then he starts running.

[00:15:57]My heart jumps into my throat. This can't be happening.

[00:16:01]I move to the living room, but I'm too late. I hear the mudroom door open.

[00:16:05]Heavy footsteps coming throughout the house. Then he's standing in my living room, a complete stranger. Unbelievably, he starts screaming at me and rushing.

[00:16:15]I don't understand a single word. His voice fills up the entire cottage. He's pointing, demanding something from me, and all I can think about are the locks, the cutout blinds, the neighbors telling us about the screaming and all the strange people who used to come out here. Did this man know the previous tenant? Did he think he still lived here? Was he here to hurt me? I don't know. All I know is there's a massive angry stranger in my house and I'm all alone. So, I start screaming back.

[00:16:44]Get out. Get out of my house, you [ __ ] prick.

[00:16:48]He keeps yelling in rush and getting louder and more frustrated. I'm backing away, yelling over him, and for what feels like forever, we're just kind of screaming at each other. Then suddenly, he just switches to English. Where's your husband? I stare at him. You got to be kidding me. I have no idea what he's talking about. I continue screaming for him to leave. Something then changes on his face. He looks around the room, looks back at me, and I can actually see the realization happen in real time. He has the wrong house. It's clear as day.

[00:17:21]He mutters an apology, turns around, and just like that, he's gone. The entire encounter only lasts a few minutes, but my legs are shaking so badly I have to sit down. I call my husband crying, and by pure luck, he's turning onto our street. He pulls into the driveway just as the black BMW is driving further down the road and and stopping near another house. My husband sees it and his face changes. I've never seen him look like that. He tells me he'll be right back and takes off after him.

[00:17:51]Looking back now, it was incredibly stupid. We have no idea who this man was or what he was capable of. But my husband catches back up beside him and starts yelling, "The hell's wrong with you? you just walked into my house and terrified my wife? The man apologizes again and finally explains that he was looking for the previous tenant.

[00:18:10]Apparently, the guy owed him a large amount of money and after months of waiting, he came to collect. He thought he still lived at our cottage. The second he realized I didn't speak Russian and had no idea what he was talking about, he understood the previous tenant had moved. My husband doesn't really care for the apology who storms into a stranger's home. Nothing else happened that day and thankfully we were okay. But the strangest part is that this wasn't the last time somebody came looking for him. Over the next 2 years, multiple people showed up at our house asking for the previous tenant.

[00:18:45]Different cars, different faces, different stories. Even now, many years later, we still live there. The locks are gone, the blinds have been replaced, the bunky is clean, and there's a new sweet loving young pup that hangs back out there now. It's our home. But every time a strange vehicle slows down outside, I still feel my body tense up.

[00:19:04]That will never truly go away. We unfortunately inherited a ghost. And every now and again, folks will come looking for him.

[00:19:36]I was 21 years old on my honeymoon when I experienced the most unsettling place that I've ever been in my entire life.

[00:19:43]I'm 48 now and after all the places I've traveled to, all the old buildings I've walked through and all the strange moments life seemingly has thrown at me, nothing has ever compared to the feeling that I had inside that converted barn in Lston Cornwall.

[00:19:58]Admittedly, the first night was perfect.

[00:20:01]We drank wine and laugh, spoke about our future together. The barn itself was beautiful with this old countryside charm, thick stone walls, wooden beams, and complete silence outside once the sun went down. truly breathtaking.

[00:20:15]But by the third day, I started feeling like I was being watched. The worst paranoia I've ever had in my entire life.

[00:20:23]It wasn't the feeling that somebody was hiding nearby. It was much harder to explain than that. It was like the building itself was aware of me, like there was an invisible set of eyes following me from room to room, and they would never look away. The whitewash brick walls began to bother me. I know how absurd this all sounds, but they look like bones.

[00:20:43]Around the same time, the Fred and Rose West murders had dominated the news, and those stories had affected me really deeply. My husband kept telling me I was frightening myself and allowing all these horrors to invade our honeymoon. I desperately wanted him to be right.

[00:20:58]Wouldn't that have been a simple explanation? Oh, I love him for his brain. I would have actually had arguments with myself in my head. You're on your honeymoon. You're in beautiful Cornwall. Stop acting like a frightened child. These delusions greatly fed into my paranoia. Then something would happen. All that confidence would disappear immediately. One afternoon, I was upstairs running a bath, sitting on the edge of the tub with my back open to the doorway when every hair on my body suddenly stood up. Someone was behind me. There wasn't any indication, just this overwhelming certainty.

[00:21:33]I spun around and nobody was there. But I swear it felt like something moved at that exact moment that I turned. Not away from me, toward me, straight at my face. Something had been standing in the doorway and rushed forward the second I noticed it. I nearly fell back into the bathtub trying to escape. I ran downstairs with my heart pounding and found my husband exactly where I left him, calmly watching TV.

[00:21:58]He smiled and told me, "You're letting your imagination get the better of you."

[00:22:03]I laughed along, but inside I'm going insane.

[00:22:07]The bedroom was even worse, if you can believe that. Hanging from wood in the wooden beams over the foot of the bed was this enormous iron meat hook. It looked like something from an old slaughter house, completely out of place in this romantic cottage. At first, I would make jokes about it, but one night I woke up and saw it moving back and forth. The windows were shut, the room was still, no wind, nothing to move it naturally.

[00:22:31]I laid there staring at it, waiting for it to stop.

[00:22:35]Every time it reached the end of its swing, it began moving back and my stomach would flip. Eventually though, it became still and I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. By the end of the first week, I refused to go upstairs after dark. I told my husband I would rather sleep on the sofa bed downstairs than lie beneath that hook one more night.

[00:22:54]There were countless other moments, too.

[00:22:56]strange noises from empty rooms, doors that seemed to move on their own, cold spots that made the hairs of my arm stand up.

[00:23:04]The constant feeling that somebody was just standing behind me, waiting for me to turn around. The worst part really was what it did to my mind. I became embarrassed, mortified even. I was a newly married woman on what was supposed to be the happiest holiday in my life.

[00:23:20]And here I was sitting downstairs, scared of a building. I started to question myself. Was I becoming manic?

[00:23:27]Was I allowing horrific news stories to completely warp my imagination?

[00:23:32]Maybe. But my body didn't care what my brain was saying to it. I became physically sick. My stomach stayed in knots. And every morning, I woke up disappointed that we still had another day left here.

[00:23:44]We had booked it for 2 weeks and we left 5 days early. The relief I felt driving away was unlike anything I've ever experienced. No guilt, no shame, just peace.

[00:23:55]3 years later, I'm lying on my sofa watching Time Team with Tony Robinson.

[00:24:00]It's a historic program.

[00:24:03]I was half asleep when something on the screen made me sit upright. I knew that place, the field, the trees, the hills.

[00:24:10]It was the land surrounding our honeymoon barn, Dead Ringer. The archaeologist explained they were investigating the remains of an old tuberculosis hospital and believed the area may have been used as a burial ground for patients who did not survive.

[00:24:23]a possible mass grave.

[00:24:26]My blood ran cold. I knew those fields because we walked there a lot, fed the horses. In fact, one morning I discovered I was badly allergic to them.

[00:24:34]My face became swollen, my eyes watered, and I was struggling to breathe. So, I ran back to the barn alone to wash myself up. Ironically, the panic of not being able to breathe was the only thing that had temporarily distracted me from my fear of that place. Until I stepped back inside, I could remember it like it was yesterday. That feeling returned immediately. I was downstairs washing my face when a door upstairs slammed with such violence that I screamed, "Bang!"

[00:25:01]A furious slam that echoed through the entire barn. I froze with water dripping from my face and just listened. Surely, this would be my death. But there was nothing. Complete silence. I stayed downstairs and waited for my husband to return. Perhaps I was young, vulnerable, and had just allowed the horrors of the Fred and Rose West case to poison my imagination. It is a completely reasonable assumption.

[00:25:27]But nearly three decades have passed now since my honeymoon. I've never walked into another place that made every instinct in my body scream that I needed to leave. Whether it was something supernatural, the tragedy buried beneath that land, or simply my own mind turning against me, I will truly never know.

[00:26:08]This happened about 15 years ago, and I still think about it now. We lived in a completely normal mid- terrace house, not far from where I live today. Nothing about it looked strange. It was completely disarming in all the ways a home usually does.

[00:26:23]But from the first day that we moved in, I absolutely hated the loft. I never heard noises from it. Nothing moved up there. I had no reason to be afraid of it. But every night before bed, I found myself looking at the hatch in the ceiling. I told myself to ignore it, walk upstairs, and then somehow my eyes would always drip back toward it. I don't know why. I just hated that little square, that little cut of space that acted as a portal to a place that I couldn't see. Anything could be up there, squatting in the dark and waiting.

[00:26:54]The feeling became so bad that I actually asked my partner to bring home a thick, heavy padlock so I could lock the latch hatch shut. He laughed. I think you're being a little paranoid, he said. Yeah, maybe I was. But one afternoon on a Sunday, we were cooking dinner when we heard a knock at the front door.

[00:27:15]I looked through the window and saw this old estate car parked awkwardly across our drive. A man that I didn't recognize was standing at our door. Before I could react, my partner came from the kitchen and opened it. No hesitation, a complete betrayal in my mind. The man introduced himself and explained that he'd lived in the house as a child. He was passing through the area with his family and wondered if he could take a look around.

[00:27:39]I wanted to say no. I wanted to scream.

[00:27:42]Instead, my partner welcomed him inside.

[00:27:46]As he talked, I kept looking past him toward the car. There was an elderly woman in the front passenger seat and two children in the back. They never moved. They weren't speaking either, just looking around. They weren't even watching the front of the house. They kind of spooked me out. They just sat there perfectly still, staring straight ahead. They looked like dolls. The man walked around downstairs and pointed out what had changed. He seemed friendly enough, but for me, it somehow made him even more unsettling. There was no obvious reason to fear him, but like that loft, he just made me afraid.

[00:28:21]Then he says that his bedroom used to be upstairs. My partner smiled and said, "Oh, okay. Well, come on. I'll show you." Again, that instinct told me not to follow them, but I did. The man walked from room to room, remembering his childhood. He pointed to where his bed had been and talked about a stain on the floor and the spankings that he got because of it. Then just as we were about to head back downstairs, he stopped. Right beneath that loft hatch.

[00:28:49]Without even looking away from it, he quietly asked, "Uh, have you ever had any trouble with the loft?"

[00:28:57]I went completely cold. The hairs on my arm stood up and I stood there dumbfounded.

[00:29:02]He looked at me and said, "Something happened to me and my dad up there when I was little."

[00:29:08]He explained that one day they were in the loft when this bright light appeared. Something so bright it was hard for them to see. He said it somehow pulled them toward the opening and suddenly the hatch then slammed shut, trapping his father inside. His dad was banging and shouting from the other side while he stood outside it terrified.

[00:29:27]And that's all I really needed to hear.

[00:29:29]I didn't ask how his father got out and that's because I didn't desire an ending to his story. I wanted this guy out of my [ __ ] house.

[00:29:38]A few minutes later, the man left just as quickly as he'd arrived. Before he walked out, he casually mentioned that there were gold watches buried deep in the back garden, hidden there from his father years before. He said we could dig them up if we wanted. We never did.

[00:29:53]The moment he walked outside, I went straight to the window. I had to watch them leave, but I also wanted to see those people in the car move. I needed to know that they were real, or at least ordinary.

[00:30:04]But the car was gone and I never saw it start. It seemed to vanish from the driveway and we never saw any of them again. We ended up only living there for a few more years and I was creeped out the entire time. We didn't investigate, didn't explore, didn't get the bottom of anything. I guess some things are truly better off forgotten.

[00:30:44]The house that I live in has always had these strange things happen. Little things that make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. But this was the first time I genuinely started wondering if my daughter and I were alone in that house. For context, it's just me and my daughter. We don't live with a man. We don't have roommates. There's nobody coming and going. It's just the two of us.

[00:31:05]One Wednesday morning around 3:00, I'm dead asleep when I hear three distinct knocks on my bedroom door. Knock. Knock.

[00:31:14]Knock. Somebody needed my attention. I shot awake instantly, heart racing, because there was something about the sound that just felt off, weird. I sat there for a few seconds listening.

[00:31:27]expecting to hear footsteps or my daughter calling out for me. We never had visitors that were so unannounced.

[00:31:34]Finally, I got up and checked her room.

[00:31:36]My daughter was sleeping. The next morning, I asked her, "Did you knock on mommy's door last night?" She looked confused and told me no. She said that she'd slept through the night. So, I tried to brush it off. Maybe I dreamt it or I was half asleep and just imagined the whole thing. It happens.

[00:31:54]Then Wednesday afternoon around 4:00, I come home after taking my daughter to daycare. The second I stepped inside, I froze. There was this smell, a very strong smell of men's cologne. Not a faint whiff or something I had to search for. It was powerful, overwhelming, like somebody had just sprayed it moments before I walked inside. And it had never been in my home before. I stood there trying to recognize the smell, but I couldn't. I'd never smelled it in my life.

[00:32:24]Every door was locked. Every window looked untouched. There was no sign that anybody had been there. I felt uncomfortable the rest of the evening, checking every room multiple times and convincing myself that I was being ridiculous. Could there actually be somebody somewhere hiding?

[00:32:40]Then Thursday morning around 2:00 in the morning, I woke up to my daughter screaming. It was a primal scream, like she was about to die. One thing about my daughter is that she's not dramatic at night. She usually doesn't ever call for me if she's yelling for me like that.

[00:32:55]Something has happened. Something has scared her. It's only happened once. It was for a really big spider coming down the wall, so I knew it had to be something real. I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway. She was standing at the threshold of the bathroom, absolutely hysterical. I grabbed her, asked her, "What's wrong? What happened?" And she could barely make out the words. "There's a man." I felt my stomach drop. What do you mean a man?

[00:33:22]There's a man standing at the end of the hallway looking at me. She repeated it over and over. There's a man standing there. There's a man standing there right there. He wouldn't stop looking at me. The terror in her voice is something I'll never forget. I turned on every light in the house. I checked every room, every closet, every corner where somebody could hide, but there was nothing to see. Eventually, I finally got her back to sleep, but I didn't sleep another second that entire night.

[00:33:49]When morning came around 6:00, I walked into the kitchen and immediately noticed something was weird. The kitchen blinds were pulled up and my back door curtains had been ripped open. The little clip that I use every night to hold the curtain shut was now lying on the floor.

[00:34:04]I'm fully obsessive about checking my house before bed. I go around like Fort Knox. Every door gets locked. Every window gets checked. I hate leaving the blinds open at night because I don't like the idea of people seeing inside when I can't see outside.

[00:34:18]The fact is, I know those blinds were closed. I know those curtains were shut.

[00:34:22]There's no two ways about it. Again, no real explanation unless somebody had been in here.

[00:34:29]Saturday morning, I smelled that cologne again, and nothing else presented itself. My daughter has become convinced that that smell belongs to the man that she saw standing at the end of the hallway. Honestly, it's that thought that keeps me up at night, and I'm just praying that he isn't actually real.

[00:35:07]This took place a few years ago and now every single time I talk about it or write about it, I get chills. Before I even get to the main thing, there's another experience that happened in this house that I still have no explanation for.

[00:35:22]One night, my mom and I were sitting in the living room watching TV. It was late. I don't remember what time it was, but the whole house was quiet. The TV was low and neither of us were really talking. And suddenly, we heard a woman's voice coming from the back bedroom. Not a whisper, not the TV, a woman, loud as hell. She was speaking English, but it was too hard to make out any of it.

[00:35:45]It was faint at first, and we actually paused and looked at each other because we weren't sure if we heard something from outside. But the voice kept going, and it was slowly getting louder. It sounded like somebody was standing in the bedroom talking to themselves. And with every few seconds, it became more clear, more intense, like they were walking closer and closer toward us. My mom muted the TV, and we just sat there frozen.

[00:36:10]Neither of us wanted to say a word. We were literally in shock. My mom's eyes were filled up with tears. The voice then got louder, unbearably loud. Then, just as it reached the point where it sounded like somebody should have been standing in the hallway outside the living room, it stopped. There's no footsteps or closing door. The noise or voice just kind of vanished.

[00:36:32]We checked every room in the house.

[00:36:34]Nothing was there. And to this day, neither of us can really explain what we heard or what happened. So when other things start happening, I'd already had that memory sitting in the back of my mind. Every night when I would lay down in bed to go to sleep, I would get this overwhelming feeling that I wasn't alone. It's hard to explain to people who have never felt it. You know, when somebody walks into a room behind you and you can feel their presence before you even turn around. It was exactly like that. Every night I would climb into bed, turn off the light, and almost immediately feel like there was somebody standing somewhere in my room just watching me. Sometimes I would lie completely still because I was too scared to roll over and look. My brain would start racing. Is there somebody actually in the house? Did I leave a door unlocked? Am I imagining all this?

[00:37:24]Eventually, I would force myself to calm down, go to sleep. Nothing ever happened. Just get over it, dude.

[00:37:31]That was until one night again. I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep when I suddenly heard breathing right next to my ear. Somebody was laying inches from my face.

[00:37:43]I froze in terror. At first, I thought maybe it was me somehow overhearing my own breathing, like bouncing off the walls or something. So, I held my breath.

[00:37:52]The breathing continued, and I remember the exact feeling that went through my body when I realized that. My heart started pounding so loud that I could hear it.

[00:38:01]My dog was in the living room that night, so I knew it wasn't him. There's nobody else in the house. I slowly tried to convince myself I'm exhausted. Maybe I was already halfway asleep. Maybe my brain is playing some kind of trick on me. Yeah, yeah, that's got to be it.

[00:38:16]This isn't real.

[00:38:19]So, somehow I rolled over, shut my eyes, and eventually went to sleep.

[00:38:25]What a mistake that [ __ ] was because I end up having the most horrific dream of my life. And it didn't feel like a dream. It felt like I actually woke up.

[00:38:35]In the dream, I sat up in my bed and walked down the hallway to the second bedroom on the opposite side of the house. The room itself felt negative, like it was backwards. I walked over to the window and looked outside toward my grandparents place. Their lights were on and standing in their window staring directly at me was something that did not look human. I don't really know how to describe it other than demonic. Its face was stretched into this horrible smile. Its eyes were locked onto me. It even had horns and it was laughing. This silent horrible cackle while it pointed directly at me. I woke up screaming. My entire body was soaked in sweat and chills from head to toe. My heart felt like it was going to come out of my chest. And that feeling was back. That feeling that somebody was in the room with me. I wanted to move to turn the lights on and run. But I couldn't.

[00:39:27]Whether I was actually frozen or just so terrified, I couldn't make myself move.

[00:39:30]I don't know. I lay there for what felt like forever, but it was probably only like 5 minutes or so. Then suddenly, just like that, everything went away.

[00:39:39]The chills disappeared. The sweat stopped. The fear was gone. It was like somebody had flipped a switch inside me.

[00:39:46]I sat up, threw on some clothes, grabbed my keys, and got out of the house as fast as I could. I had to be work at 5:30 that morning, but I think I got there around 4:00.

[00:39:55]Instead of going inside, I reclined my seat, slept in my car, and I didn't care how ridiculous it looked. I'm not going back inside of that house. The next day, I start researching what people do if they think there might be a spirit in their home. I know how this sounds. I know it sounds crazy, but at this point, I'm willing to try anything. One thing I kept reading was that you could tell whatever was there that it's not welcome. So that night, I got into bed, turned off the lights, and said out loud, "All right, whoever is in here with me, go away. You're not welcome here." It felt silly saying it, but I said it anyway. Something needed to happen. I was desperate.

[00:40:37]I swear to y'all, whether it was a spirit, sleep paralysis, or my own mind playing tricks on me, or just me being terrified because I was alone at night, it worked. Placebo or not, [ __ ] worked.

[00:40:50]That feeling never came back. But more importantly, no more voices, no more scary dreams. I don't think I could handle another demonic vision or disembodied voice. None of that is welcome here.