It’s that time of the year again. Come, sit around the campfire in the silent night and tell us a true experience you or someone you know had that you simply can’t explain with sanity. What paranormal/unreal/ human/ inhuman / etc. true story has left you scared/scarred for life?

There was an abandoned windmill along the river in the neighborhood where I grew up.

At one time, the windmill (with its large wooden blades) would pump water from the river, but it was shut down and the entry door locked up.

Kids from the area would gather there at night and just hang out. Then, one night (as I once posted), the windmill started to churn even though it wasn’t windy.

It hadn’t rotated for years, but there it was in minimal moonlight with its impressive blades circulating as if there were a stiff breeze.

I Apologize now for how long this is

Im from the rural midwest. I used to hang out with these 2 guys all the time when I was a older teen, we’ll call them Arnold and Zues. Well we are from rural midwest, so its pretty common thing to do to just drive down random dirt roads seeing where they take you, day or night, for fun. So one night, my buddy Arnold and Zues come and pick me up, and they are talking about this creeping new bridge they found. Saying its haunted and shit, spooky stuff happening to them. So Im like bet, lets go.

So its like 2am when we finally arrive, and we are a good 30 miles from the nearest town, in any direction. So they take me to this bridge, this old creaky ass stone/steel bridge, complete with the arches overhead and everything. Its barely wide enough for a car to drive down. Its over this river, and the river is maybe 30 or 40 feet below it. Also, its deep in the middle of this wooded area. So like theres thick forest on all sides.

So we get out of the car. We’re poking around, talking, goofing off. And theyre telling me about the spooky shit that has happened to them out there. Car mysteriously not starting, lights in the distance, thinking they hear voices etc. So Im like ok, kinda spooky. Right on.

So we are standing on the side of the bridge, and Zeus starts picking up random stones tossing them into the water. We arent really talking, just listening to the sploosh, sploosh, sploosh at this point, from the stones hitting the water. So about the 7th or 8th sploosh, we here an even bigger splashing sound, come from the opposite side of the bridge. Like we all jump, it had to have been something heavy as fuck.

So we run cautiously over to the other side of the bridge, and looking down, there are like zero ripples. Like we shined flashlights down there too, just to be sure. Zero side of ripples anywhere. The quiet little river is completely still on the surface. So Zeus decides hes going to go down there and investigate.

So he walks off and disapears into the brush under the bridge. About 3 minutes later he comes rushing back up the enbankment, bolts to the car, swings open the door, gets in and shuts the door. We are like what the fuck!?

So we go over there, and Zues is like visibly shaken, hes damn near white, and hes like sobbing. We try to get him to open the door and he wont. Hes more or less oblivious to us.

So me and Arnold, are like ok, we for some reason decide we need to go down under the bridge. Maybe Zues is just pranking us or something. So we mosey on down there. Under the bridge, we are looking at the river, looking at the trestles underneath supportting the bridge, looking at the ground, we dont see anything.

Then as we are standing there trying to make sense of what Zeus might have seen, we both hear like a muffled sounding voice. Its so unexpected I jump, and Arnold seems visibly surprised. I hear a peculiar sound, and turn to look towards the river. Instantly I see a figure, swinging from a noose up in the trestles beneath the bridge. Pure terror is how I describe that moment, mixed with 100% panic. Then, it turns, like the rope moves and the figure swings/turns slowly around to face us. We are both rooted to the spot. The face. I can never unsee that deathly face. I wasnt sure if it was real or not, I wasnt sure if I should run or not. I briefly caught a glimpse of Arnold also clearly in the same state of mind.

Then the rope suddenly snapped and the figure plunged into the river. Me and Arnold are just awestruck/petrified. But then, as we are looking into the river where this happened, I hear a noise, he hes it too. We look behind us, and coming up the enbankment, straight towards us, this exact same dark figure is flat out rushing at us.

We took off at a breakneck speed, running straight to the car. On the way up the enbankment, Arnold, I hear him yelp. He told me later he felt a hand brush against his shoulder, as if someone was trying to grab him.

We get in the car, and slam on the gas. Car doesnt go. Arnold tries again. Damn car is dead as fuck. We aint moving. Zues is nowhere to be found. Hes not in the car. We are freaking the hell out. We hear a blood curdling scream, sounded like what I would call a death scream, when you witness someone die and someone close to them sees it and lets out there scream of pure agony and terror (dont recommend hearing that either).

It comes from the woods, off to the right of the car. Finally Arnold gets the car to turn on, and we just floor it. Down the bridge, down the dirt road. Suddenly Arnold shouts and slams on the brakes. Someone runs from the side of the road into view, Its Zues. He opens the car door hops inside and its like Go! Go! Go!

We fly down the road, as fast as we can go without fishtailing, and the whole time, we keep hearing the maniacal laughter and screaming coming from off in the distance to the sides of the car.

When I was younger my family and I would go overseas to visit relatives. There was a guest house(known as a haveli) nearby my grandma’s house where my siblings, myself and our cousins would play at.

For work-related purposes, people would come and go for tea and stay the night. Meanwhile us kids would just run around crazy everywhere, especially the roof top. We never saw anything strange, but sometimes the guests staying over would hear childrens’ laughter coming from the rooftop at night when no one was there. They even reported being slapped by someone when asleep.

Overtime, it became abandoned as there was a new guesthouse built nearby for the visitors. Only my grandma went to the old haveli to grow some crops, but she stopped doing that too as the entire building slowly started sinking.

The place became messy and covered in dust, and my uncle then decided to remove all the furniture from the rooms. He sent a couple of workers to the haveli just after evening, but not long after they came back running, saying they saw something. My uncle thought they were joking and dismissed them, and a few days later at the same time, sent new people to get the furniture out.

The new workers came back out as well. In their words, they described how when they went into the room, they only saw smoke everywhere, and on the bed were two women sitting, one smaller than the other. They were covered head to toe in black veils.

The room was locked, and there was no window for them to get through. High brick walls surround the whole house. My uncle and the others still don’t know who or what those women were.

Also, the haveli is just opposite from the local cemetery, which might explain the occurrence.

I wouldn’t call it paranormal per se, but it’s how a dream effected me in real life. It was summer and our family cabin in right on the beach so I was sleeping on the outdoor patio couch thing. I dreamt that the ocean was really rough and it was calling to me. It was saying my name and telling me to come in become part of it, etc, even though it was clearly rough and dangerous.

The creepy part at least for me was what happened after the dream. I woke up and it was still dark out, ocean rough. But even though I’ve never been restless in my sleep, let alone anything like sleepwalk, when I woke up I was barely on the couch. Only below my knees were on the cushion. I was holding my upper body up, almost like a push-up position and turned so I was facing the ocean. As if I’d been trying to crawl towards it. It’s hard to explain properly, especially the precise position I woke in but I have goosebumps just thinking about it.

When my son was just over a year, he stood in front of my wife and I as we sat on the couch, and was just babbling. He didn’t say a lot of coherent words as he didn’t know a bunch at that point. Mid sentence he stops, looks to his right toward the dining room, raises his hand in a wave and says “Hi” then goes back to talking. I look at his mom as she says “ I hate it when he does that”.

The house was built in the early 1900’s and other things, such as seeing a small shadow run into the bedroom at night while in bed, when all the dogs were on the bed, had previously occurred.