I'll Be Laying Awake Tonight Thinking Of These 18 Living Nightmares People Have Experienced And Still Can't Find An Explanation For

Even though they keep me up at night, I'm constantly reading about the creepy, unexplained mysteries in people's lives. Recently, we posted a few of these stories, prompting even more of you to share the mysterious and terrifying things you've experienced in your own life. Here are just a handful of the many eerie stories.

1."I was 13 and dreaming. In the dream, I was looking out of my bedroom window that faced east. It was a crystal clear day — no clouds in the sky, but the air felt weird. I heard static far away (like a radio station out of range). It got closer and closer. I could hear people talking but couldn't make out what they were saying. I just knew they were in an airplane and could see it coming into view from my window. It looked like a Fisher-Price toy airplane. The static sound got louder and closer."

2."We have three young children who will come into our room late at night while we are sleeping. They will usually come to my side of the bed and whisper something to me that always startles me. One particular night/early morning, I woke up to use the restroom (I felt wide awake, which is important to note). As soon as I got back into the room, I lay back down and got under the covers. At that very moment, I heard a very distinct and loud whisper say, 'Daddy.'"

"It startled me, and I popped right up to see which child needed me. Nobody was there. It freaked me out, and I almost woke my wife up to tell her. I didn't, but I mentioned it to her in the morning.

She proceeded to remind me that that day would have been the sixth birthday of a baby she had miscarried. I'm not sure how to explain it as it was so clear that someone said 'Daddy,' but it didn't come from any of my children.

I was definitely wide awake, and neither one of them was there. I think about it often, and I'm spooked by it, but I'm sort of comforted by the thought that it was our child letting us know it was with us."

—Anonymous, 41, South Carolina

3."When I was about 19, I lived with my grandparents in Connecticut. There is a huge section of two highways (Interstate 84 and Route 8) that cross over each other (all four directions are a separate over/underpass); everyone calls it 'the mixer.' While driving home east on Route 8 late one night, doing the speed limit in the middle lane (probably about 65 mph), I felt someone tap gently on my left shoulder. I was driving alone. I don't know why, but I suddenly felt compelled to move to the right lane."

4."I was going to a concert with a friend and made an appointment to get my hair cut that morning. I figured it would look nice for the concert if I got it done that day. However, I realized my 11 a.m. appointment would conflict with my daughter's nap time, and I didn't want her to be grumpy while my mom watched her for me, so I switched it to the night before instead. The morning of the concert, my salon was on the news. The ex-husband of one of the stylists (her chair was next to my stylist's) came into the salon at 11:09 and murdered her as well as two other people. He shot four others before shooting himself. Had I been in that salon, I very well could've been murdered."

—Jessica, 42, Florida

5."When my daughter was in her 20s, we were playing a game, and the question was about a recurring dream. She said when she was little, in our first house, she would dream she saw the Grim Reaper. I was shocked. I slept one night with her in her room and also saw the Grim Reaper. After we moved out of that house, the family that moved in had children die in that room when the house caught on fire."

6."I (a single woman) was alone in my new tiny house built in a rural area in Amish country. I was curled up in a comfy chair watching the 11 o'clock news. Behind my chair was a short hallway going back to two bedrooms and a bath. The picture on the screen changed to a side view of my room with me sitting in the chair watching the TV. I even saw myself sitting up and leaning forward towards the TV in this view. I then saw a man dressed in Amish garb walking towards me with his arms raised on the screen. By then, I jumped up and turned away from the TV to see who was there. Nothing. No one. I turned quickly back towards the TV to see if I could see where he went, but the screen had changed back to the news. The following days, I asked my neighbors if anything weird had happened to them, and they told me that their grandfather had just walked away one night and was never seen again."

—Cindy, 73, Delaware

7."My husband and my mother were always close. When she was in hospice and dying in 2009, he and I took turns sitting with her, waiting for the end. She was in a coma and didn't respond to our voices or any kind of stimuli. The night she died, my husband went home around midnight after sitting with her for several hours, and I took over to be at her bedside. At 3:30 a.m., she took her last breath and was pronounced deceased. I decided not to call him but just to go home as we lived fairly close to the hospice. So I gathered up her things and drove home, arriving at about 4:15 a.m."

8."When I was 10, I was in a bad rollover accident with my mother and younger sister. We had hydroplaned our Jeep Cherokee, spun out several times, and the car had flipped and came to rest on its passenger side. Some weak and spindly trees held up the Jeep on the shoreline of a small lake. If those trees gave way, we were going in the water. Our area wasn't densely populated at the time, and the chances of anyone arriving soon to help us were slim. This was also WAY before cell phones and the like."

"Our mom managed to pull herself out of the driver's side door and immediately yelled, 'OH, THANK GOD! My children are in the car. Please help me!' I hoisted my little sister up to my mom first, and then she pulled me out. As I emerged from the car into the rain, I saw a smiling man standing on the bank with outstretched arms. 

He was wearing a fully white three-piece suit and had blonde hair down to his shoulders. My mom handed me to the man, and he clasped me firmly to his chest as he carried me back up to the shoulder of the road. All I remember thinking was, 'Why isn't he wet?'

We were all soaked to the bone in this torrential downpour, but the man in white was completely dry. After getting my sister and me to safety, he helped my mom. She ran up the incline to my sister and me, hugging us and crying. She turned to thank the man, and he was gone.

We could see for at least a mile in any direction, and he had just ceased to be. A neighbor happened upon us shortly thereafter, and she saw nothing of the man, either. Nearly 40 years later, we still remember him with absolute clarity. Don't want to think about what would have happened if we'd have stayed in that car."

—Carrie, 46, Georgia

9."My mother-in-law died a few years ago, right after Christmas. She had lived in my husband's childhood home until three years before her death. She moved to assisted living and eventually died in a nursing home. We sold the house when she moved out and shut down the phone line. A year later, after she died, our phone rang. It was 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve. We never answered the phone and would wait for the answering machine to pick up to hear who it was. There was no message. I went over to the phone and checked the caller ID. The last number we received was my husband's childhood phone number. That phone number had been disconnected for over three years. I called back the number, and there was a recording that the number had been disconnected! I told my husband, and he told me to recheck the caller ID. The number was gone. I think my mother-in-law was wishing us a Merry Christmas."

10."I have always had strange dreams since as young as I can remember, with very specific details that I never really understood. I wake up with a horrible sense of dread, and in the following days, I see them play out, and it all makes sense. For example, when I was 5 years old, I dreamt I saw my mom putting a couch in the back of a pickup truck. The next day, she decided to leave my dad unexpectedly, and I watched her load our couch into her brother's pickup truck. In high school, I dreamt my best friend was killed by a drunk driver, so after a night out, I begged him not to drive home and even took his keys to stop him. He eventually got them, and on his way home, drove by a horrible accident where a drunk driver hit and killed someone just minutes before."

"When I was 11, my school sent us on a trip from New England to New York. I had been looking forward to it for weeks and was so excited! The night before, I had a dream that a war broke out while I was away, and I didn't get to see my dad anymore.

In the dream, there were explosions in New York City, and I was trapped. I told my dad I couldn't go, begged, and cried, but he chalked it up to nerves, drove me to the pickup location, and tried to get me on the bus. I had such a fit that the bus ended up delayed by about half an hour until I calmed down and agreed to go, though I still had a terrible feeling.

A few hours later, when we were just about to get to the George Washington Bridge, the bus turned around and took us home without explanation. That morning was 9/11/2001, and the second plane had just hit the towers as we were entering the city. 

We would have been downtown when the first plane hit if we hadn't been delayed. Since that day, I have always trusted my gut when it comes to these specific dreams, which I only have every few years, and they feel so different from my normal dreams. Thankfully, my friends and family have started to trust me, too!

—Anonymous, 35, Massachusetts

11."I was driving down the highway, getting ready to take an off-ramp. My friend was in the car with me. All of a sudden, I got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I felt certain a car was going to hit us. The roads were a bit slick with a light coating of ice. I turned to my friend and said, 'Something's not right. I think someone is going to hit us!' She said, 'Stop it, really!' As we took the exit, I immediately pulled over to the shoulder. Only then did I realize there was a car turned sideways on the ramp ahead of us."

12."One night, when I was 11, I got really sick and started throwing up. Eventually, I stopped and went to bed. It was about 3 a.m. Even though I was tired, I couldn't fall asleep. I had a creepy feeling that someone was watching me. I told my parents that I didn't want to sleep in my bed because I wanted to be close to the bathroom, and they didn't question me. We moved two of our couches together and threw on some pillows, and I went to sleep. At about 3:30, I woke up to voices above my head."

"I clearly remember them talking about how they were going to kill me. I didn't fall asleep again until 6 a.m. In the morning, I told my mom about the voices, and she suggested that we burn some incense. We did, and it must have worked because I never heard voices again.

Later that day, some police came by our house asking if we had seen two runaways dressed in black with yellow safety vests. The police said that they were running around, staring into people's windows."

—Anonymous

13."When I was away at school, I used to take a train home to visit during breaks. I had my spring break trip on my computer and was ready to book. I was initially booking a 4:30 p.m. train to return to school on a Sunday. I sat there, ready to press the book button, when I had a really strong feeling that I should take the Saturday train instead. My parents encouraged me to take the Sunday train, so I had an extra day, but I decided to do Saturday against their wishes. I got back to the city where my school was on Saturday evening, and everything was normal."

14."My cousin and I grew up together and were more like siblings. Her dad had a mysterious accident where many believe he was pushed down a flight of stairs one night after winning a large sum of money in a golf tournament and ended up in a vegetative state for over a decade in a nursing home before finally succumbing and passing away. The money he won that fateful night was never found on him. My mom ended up raising both her and me together as we were the same age, and she was motherless, and my real dad abandoned me."

"When we were in our early 20s, we met a couple who were heavily into the occult, and they asked us one night if we wanted to join them in an Ouija board session. We finally agreed and laughed about this 'game' as we viewed it, but they were very serious and even seemed annoyed that we were joking.

They asked us if there was anyone from the dead we would like to contact, and I quickly came up with my Uncle Jimmy and wanted to know what really happened to him that night.

After the puck slid around on the board for what seemed forever, the room suddenly got very chilly, like something out of a horror movie. The woman (who did not know us or Uncle Jimmy) wrote down all that was said on paper.

Then she read it back to us. Jimmy said, 'I'm sorry, but I got tired of living in that nursing home for all those years, so I died. I know many were upset because I let go, but I couldn't live like that there anymore. Now quit messing with these occult things because they are evil.'

We promptly ran out of the house, almost in tears, and never talked about it again. We never went back to that couple's house either."

—Kevin, 58, Illinois

15."In 1985, I used to travel every few months for a weekend to a nearby city to unwind from the rigors of medical school. One weekend, I met up with a friend and went out for dinner and a few drinks. He left early, around 9 p.m., since he was heading out for a field trip to a local picnic spot by a river with some of his friends the next morning. As he was leaving, I said goodbye, and he seemed to disappear in a cloud of smoke (I've never seen anything like that before or since). A few weeks later, I found out he died trying to save two friends from drowning."

16."My dad and I had a tempestuous, semi-estranged relationship, and his poor health made everything much more fraught. About 15 years ago, I became sure that I needed to speak honestly with him before he died about the ways in which he'd hurt me, but I was afraid to do so. I loved my dad, but I was also terrified of him. Strange things began to happen around my house as I wrestled with my predicament. My shoes would disappear and then reappear inside the dryer. Lights and power would go out randomly as the fuse box showed no abnormalities. Loud rhythmic clanking developed in the house, audible only when I was upset."

"I turned on my new camera one day to find that every saved shot showed me from a distance, and I lived alone. The camera had never been out of my sight.

But the scariest instance by far was when an enormous, heavy antique mirror flew horizontally off the wall, traveling 20 feet across the room and smashing into the opposite wall before shattering. I can't stress enough that it didn't fall; it flew.

Finally, after a couple of weeks of this, I was at a friend's house when his mirror flew horizontally off his wall, too, crashing in the same very unnatural, horrible way. We were both terrified — nothing seemed to have caused it.

Twenty minutes after that happened, I got a phone call notifying me that my father had died. All of the strange activity stopped immediately. I have no idea what conclusion to draw from all of this, but it was a terrifying few weeks!"

–Allie, 39, California

17."One night, I woke up unbearably thirsty, which had never happened before (or since). I got out of bed, walked down the long hallway to the kitchen, and helped myself to a tall glass. Mid-gulp, the place just didn't feel right. I set the glass down with a few swallows left in it and edged back towards the hall. I looked behind me and saw my mother's pale form, reaching her hands out to me with a beseeching look on her face. Utterly terrified, I ran back to bed. We weren't close, hadn't spoken in about 10 years (her choice), and she lived on a different continent. I learned two weeks later that she had died that night."

18."In the summer of 2004, I was 18 years old and going on a cruise with my family, leaving out of a port in Puerto Rico. One of the islands we visited I'll never forget was Aruba, where the strangest things happened. I went on this tour where the boat floor had a glass bottom, and you could see the fish, etc. It was absolutely beautiful. I met this boy who guided the tour, and he said we should meet up at the beach later. I said yes, and we agreed on a time and place. I went with my mom, but he ended up being a no-show. My mom and I spent some time together afterward, not bothered. He ended up getting word to me that he was sorry and that we should meet at a bar."

"I went with two of my cousins to this bar, and the boy met us there. I went outside with him because I wanted a cigarette, and he said he wanted to show me this really beautiful place. I stupidly said yes. From there, things got extremely dangerous and scary. 

On the drive, he said, 'I need to stop somewhere quickly; it'll just take a second.' I said, 'Okay,' hesitantly because what else can I do?? We arrived at this house and went inside. I stood off to the side while this boy I had just met talked to the random guy extremely quietly — all hush-hush — while I stood on the other side of the room as they casually looked over at me. 

We thankfully end up leaving by the grace of God. This boy takes me to the side of a cliff in ARUBA! We talked a bit, and he tried making certain moves, but my response was that I was flattered, but we had just met. I got his phone number, and thankfully, he agreed to take me back.

I got back to the bar, and my mom was hysterical, rightfully so. I never was so scared for my life. One year later, after what happened to me, Natalee Holloway vanished while visiting Aruba. I'm not 100% positive, but the man who was accused of killing her later on looked awfully similar to the man I saw in the summer of 2004."

—Anonymous, 37, Virginia

If you've ever had a bizarre or terrifying experience that you can't explain, let us know about it in the comments below. You can also fill out this form to remain anonymous.