26 Real-Life "Unsolved Mysteries" That People Genuinely Can't Explain
Warning: This post contains mentions of murder, shootings, and death. Please proceed with caution.
Hello, fellow enthusiasts of all things spooky! March is officially in full swing, so it's time for this month's edition of ~real-life unsolved mysteries~! If you're new here, every month I ask BuzzFeed readers just like you to tell me about their creepiest, most unbelievable real-life "unsolved mysteries." An "unsolved mystery" is basically anything you can't come up with a logical explanation for. Like, for example, a paranormal experience, a glitch in the matrix, or even a run-in with your doppelgänger. If it's spooky and you're not sure how the heck it happened, you're on the right track!
I read through hundreds of puzzling and — frankly — unsettling submissions each month and pick the very best of the best to highlight. So, allow me to present you with these 26 stories that were so bone-chilling and fascinating, I just had to share them with you:
1."My sister called me because she was concerned her son had an invisible friend he always played with. He had two sisters but preferred to go outside to play with his friend instead. I brought pictures of various family members over to her house. I asked him to tell me if he saw his friend in any of the photos, wondering if it was a deceased family member of ours keeping him company. I was halfway through the stack, and he was losing interest. Then all of a sudden, he lit up and said, 'That’s my friend!' It was a picture of our brother when he was the same age as my nephew. My nephew was named after our brother, who had been killed in a car accident when he was 21 years old, over 10 years before. My sister started to cry, and I told him he was done and could go play with his friend. He still remembers his friend as an adult."
—Theresa, Woodbury, USA
2."Back in the 1990s, I gave my mother a very nice CD player as a gift. I had pre-loaded it with operatic and classical music for her. When she died years later, I brought the CD player home with me. For the next two years, at odd times, the CD player would turn on, playing Wagner's "March of the Valkyries" every time. I was telling my five grown children about this one day, out on the deck. I was met with much skepticism...until the CD player suddenly turned on and started playing the March LOUDLY. No one was in the house. The kids just stared. It did not matter which CD I had put in it to play, it always played the March."
—Anonymous
3."In 1972, I gave birth to my first child in the old Charleston, South Carolina Naval Hospital. My mom was in Detroit, Michigan but flew down to help as my hubby was at sea. Mom arrived at the hospital and was directed to my ward. On her way, she found me in the hall on a gurney holding my son. She visited, fussed over her beautiful grandson for half an hour, then went to get coffee. When she came back, she couldn't find me and asked a nurse for help. I was thrilled when Mom arrived — I had been waiting in my room since I gave birth HOURS earlier and was seeing her for the first time! She was confused, claiming to have just visited. Hospital regulations did not allow newborns to be taken out of the maternity ward, let alone left alone in a hallway with their mother, so there's no way she could've found us like that. My mom was totally confused and shocked that she was apparently visiting with my doppelgänger before she found me."
—Frances L.
4."It was Christmas Eve a few years ago, and my family had come over for dinner. My sister and BIL were staying over, but everyone else had left. It had been a busy day, and we were tired, so we turned in as soon as the dishes were done. I read in bed for an hour or so, then turned out the bedside light and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, I heard the doorknob turn and the door open, so I sat up to see what my sister wanted. Instantly, a tremendously intense beam of light hit me straight in the eyes. It was so sudden and intense that it was painful. I yelled, 'Turn off that damn light, you're blinding me!' The light went off, and I heard the door click closed. Furious, I tapped the touch light beside my bed, leaped up, and ran out to find out who had done it. My sister and her husband were snoring in bed, and even their cat was curled up with them."
"I searched through the house, but the doors were locked, and the house was otherwise empty. I was totally freaked out, but later joked that I probably died in my sleep and was 'supposed to go into the light.' We tried shining the brightest flashlight we could find from my bedroom door onto the bed, but it wasn't even close to the brilliance of the mystery light. I sold the house not long after and bought another because the creepy light was just one of many strange things that happened there."
—Anonymous
5."I work in an old estate house turned into a school. When I started, my friend and I were there late at night, decorating the gym for an event with paper snowflakes strung on fishing line and hanging between the basketball hoops. We were alone in the building. As we sat on the floor making more snowflakes and talking, all the rows of the fishing line appeared to have been pulled down on their own, stayed like that for about five seconds, then sprung back up, making all of the snowflakes bounce around. Then, we heard a woman's voice come from seemingly nowhere, saying, 'Hello? Hello?' We were the only ones there."
6."The day my dad passed away, my mom and I were keeping vigil at his bedside. When my younger brother, his wife, and his son showed up, my mom and I left the room to give them some privacy and to say goodbye. We had been standing outside the room for what seemed like a few minutes when my brother came out, teary-eyed and bewildered. Confused, he asked us why we left the room. We said we wanted to give him and his family some alone time with Dad. My brother looked at us and said that as soon as we turned to leave the room, Dad took his last breath, and he, his wife, and son were all loudly telling us he'd died and not to leave. My mom and I heard nothing. My brother also swears the door hadn't even closed before he came out to get us, but my mom and I know we'd been outside in the hallway for at least five minutes."
7."In 2011, I was on the last leg of a cross-country trip when my group stopped at a Sizzler in Blythe, California. As I was walking back to my table from the salad bar, a woman was walking toward me. We both stopped mid-stride just completely flabbergasted because it was like looking into a mirror. She had the same hairstyle, glasses, and outfit on that I did. Not only that, but her face looked just like mine. For a brief moment, I thought I might be walking into a mirrored wall. I was only confident we were different people because she wasn't holding a plate of salad like I was."
"We didn't say a word to each other, but instead we both took off in opposite directions. I got back to my table and was so confused. Thinking about this encounter still makes me feel uneasy to this day, because I don't know if she was just a doppelgänger or it was a glitch in the matrix and I somehow came face-to-face with myself. I kinda wish I would have said something to her, though."
—Alicia, Hesperia, CA
8."I moved out of my parents' house and went to live with my then-girlfriend, so I didn't see my siblings much. One weekend, they drove up with a friend and stayed with me. It was perfect — my girlfriend was away, so we had the whole house to ourselves. We were getting ready to go out, so people were showering and getting dressed all upstairs. I was downstairs in the kitchen washing some dishes. I didn’t know this at the time, but both my siblings were already outside, hanging around the lawn, waiting for me and our friend. My friend walked into the kitchen and asked me where everyone was. I looked at him, confused, and told him that I thought they were all together. When I finished that sentence, we both heard someone run down the stairs and into the hall behind the kitchen."
"The steps were fast and heavy, there was no mistaking them. Since we had wood flooring, it was an even more distinct sound. The steps faded right before turning into the kitchen. My friend and I freaked the hell out, and both my brothers ran in to see what the commotion was all about. There was nobody else there.
It wasn’t the first time I had experienced something like this when I was in that house, but it definitely creeped me out."
—Anonymous
9."My husband and I stayed in Sedona, Arizona for two months about 12 years ago. One day, we decided to eat lunch at a local restaurant. It was chilly, so we both were wearing our down vests. Mine was blue, his was black. While we ate, we took off our vests and draped them over the back of our chairs. When we finished, I took my vest off the chair back and carried it out. My husband was paying the check and forgot his vest when he left. A couple of minutes later, he realized he had left it on the chair back and went back to our table to get it. It was not there. We asked the manager if anyone had turned it in, but no such luck. We asked the other patrons at tables near us if they had seen anyone take that black vest, but they said no. We left our name and phone number in case someone turned it in, but never heard back from the restaurant."
"As it was still cold in Sedona, my husband needed a down vest, so the next day we bought another one for him to wear.
A few weeks later, we drove back to our home in Chicago. When we got to our house, my husband went to hang up the new vest he bought. He opened the closet and there, hanging neatly in its customary spot, was the black vest he'd lost in Sedona."
—Susan, Arizona, USA
10."When I was about 6 years old, my father, mom, two brothers, and I lived in a duplex in San Antonio, Texas. One night, my father was next door at the neighbor's house, and my mom was at work (she worked a night shift as a waitress). My brothers and I were in our bedroom, which had two beds in it. They slept in one bed, and I slept in the other by myself every night. On this particular night, we were jumping on our beds, which our parents never allowed us to do. We laughed and threw pillows at each other and were just having a fun time with no parents around to tell us to stop. After a while, our beds began to shake on their own."
"This made us stop and look at each other, confused. We couldn’t make the whole bed we were standing on top of to vibrate like that. Suddenly, the beds began to move around the room, sliding from side to side as if someone or something was moving them, wanting to join in on our fun. We were too afraid to jump off of the beds, so we stood and stared, puzzled.
Finally, we heard our father walk in the front door, and the beds stopped moving completely. The bed covers, our hair, and our clothes were a mess, so when my father saw the room, he didn’t want to hear anything we had to say — he just demanded we clean up our room. He pushed the beds back to their original places because we were too small to do it.
I remember that night like it happened yesterday. It never happened again, but it wasn’t the end of the paranormal activity in my life."
—Cassandra, San Antonio, TX
11."When I was 7, I was supposed to sleep over at my friend's house down the street. As I was getting ready to go, my grandmother suddenly told me that I was not going. I hadn't done anything wrong to warrant the change of heart, but she still would not let me go. Tons of whining and crying ensued, but she would not budge, and she would not give me a reason. As it turned out, my friend's mother was having an affair. Her boyfriend came to the house in the middle of the night and shot and killed my friend's mother. A bullet was lodged in my friend's face, and her brother was shot in the back. I would have been right next to my friend who was shot if I'd gone that night."
—Anonymous
12."My sister took prescription narcotics for cranial dystonia. She complained that her medication kept disappearing. After several complaints, I told her to give me her latest refill and I would lock them up. I carefully noted every time I took pills from the bottle, but they still kept disappearing a few at a time. I started carrying the lockbox key with me at all times, but that didn't help. On one occasion, after picking up a refill of 60 pills, my sister and I sat at the table and counted the pills carefully. There were 58. My neighbor popped in to visit, and I asked her to watch and count again with us. There were 55. It was impossible, so we counted a third time. Now it was down to 52. They were on a tray on the table, so I know none were dropped. They simply disappeared before our eyes. To this day, I have no explanation for it."
—Anonymous
13."Back in 2019, I visited my sister in California with two friends. Coming home, we took a redeye, so we began landing in Philadelphia around dawn. Daylight stretched across the city, so I could see everything and patiently waited to land. Once we rounded in the air and the pilot announced we would be landing shortly, I looked out the window and saw a green light coming from somewhere in the city and stretching up into the sky, like a spotlight or something. It was gone in an instant, and I wasn't even sure I saw it. It reminded me of, like, a villain's evil laser beam blasting into the sky. Once we got off the plane, I reconvened with my friends and asked if they had seen it, too, but neither of them did."
"I assumed it was just the lack of sleep on the redeye and my mind playing tricks on me, but when we got to the parking lot and to meet my dad to take us home, I mentioned it. He saw it, too, while driving to the airport! Neither of us could explain it, and neither of us could tell where it came from. But both of us saw a flash of green light shoot into the sky and thought we were hallucinating, but we knew it was real. To this day, I still don't know what it was, but I'd like to think we witnessed some experimental ray gun or something. It was very surreal."
—Anonymous
14."This unusual experience occurred shortly after my wife and I moved into a duplex in St. Louis. We had a 29-gallon aquarium that we decided to convert to a terrarium. It sat on a wrought iron stand in front of a window, and to keep in the moisture, we had a piece of glass cut to cover the top of the tank. Above the tank and suspended from a ceiling hook, we had a large hanging basket with a fern in probably a 10-inch pot, weighing a few pounds. We never worried about this plant crashing down on the terrarium; it seemed secure."
"One morning, we woke up to find the hanging basket on the floor several feet away from the window. There was no dirt, no disturbance, it was neatly sitting on the wood floor as if someone carefully placed it there. We immediately ruled out that it fell from the hook as it would have crashed into the terrarium, easily breaking the glass and creating a huge mess. My wife suggested I must have been sleepwalking and taken the plant down. To do this, however, would have required getting a chair or a ladder from another room, standing on it to lift the hanging basket off the ceiling hook, walking across the room with the plant, setting it carefully on the floor, taking the chair back to the kitchen, and coming back to bed, which I doubt I could've done. To this day, we have no explanation. There was never anything paranormal in the house, and we never experienced anything like that again."
—Anonymous
15."My husband, two daughters, and I moved into a home built in the mid-1850s. We dealt with odd phenomena in the house before we even moved in. During the remodel, I’d be sweeping up after the contractors only to be interrupted by someone calling my name even though no one else was there. Anyway, after we moved in, my husband would often go to the grocery store while I got the kids ready for bed. One night, while I was upstairs with the kids who were in the bath, the TV became so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves speak. I yelled for my husband to turn down the sound to no avail. I got the kids out of the bath, wrapped them in towels, and then ran downstairs to see why on earth my husband had turned up the sound. I was astounded to find that he wasn’t there at all."
"I turned off the TV and started back upstairs only to note car lights coming up the driveway. Not only had he been gone the entire time, but he said the TV wasn't even on when he left. Later, while watching TV in our den, a remote-controlled car came rolling through. Thinking my kids or husband were playing a trick on me, I went to find the culprit. They were all sound asleep in their beds. I went back and resumed watching TV, and the remote-controlled car then flew backward across the room, hit a pillow, and spun out on its side. At that point, I ran and jumped into bed with no explanation.
Years later, while I was out of state working, my husband felt the mattress depress, the covers pull back, and someone slide into bed beside him. He said he was so scared, he just covered up his head and eventually fell asleep. The antics are ongoing (and there are many more instances), but none of them have ever brought any harm to us."
—Anonymous
16."My brother has been updating a home he purchased in Sumter, South Carolina that was built in 1869. He, I, and his dog have heard and seen 'things.' On my first visit, when I turned out the light to sleep in the upstairs front bedroom, I felt someone pulling/tugging on the bedding, almost as if I were being tucked in. Because of the work he was doing, my first thought was that mice were gnawing or climbing the bedding. I sat up and threw the bedding back rather forcefully. There were no mice, but I had seemingly been tucked in."
"Another time we were downstairs watching TV, and we clearly heard footsteps in the hall above, walking back and forth from the front of the house to the back of the house. His dog heard it as well and followed the measured steps to and fro from downstairs.
Another time — again while watching TV — something whooshed past the door to the den. We all saw it. As my brother and I looked at one another knowingly, his dog went into the hall and followed whatever we saw up the stairs into the front bedroom.
The last time I visited, my brother told me he was surprised I was up so early, because he heard me pacing back and forth from the front bedroom to the bathroom. I had not gotten up at any point through the night, and told him so.
My brother has tried to research the house to no avail because the courthouse and all the records held there went up in flames just after the turn of the century. We've decided that he shares the house with the friendly spirit who is a woman, and because 'she' seems so focused on the front bedroom, we've decided that room was where her child(ren) slept. We've named her after our two grandmothers: Maud Alice."
—Anonymous
17."Several years ago, I was the leader for a Girl Scout Wider Opportunity. Another troop leader and I took a dozen scouts from Florida to North Carolina to backpack on the Appalachian Trail. We were driving a 15-passenger van and towing a large trailer full of our gear. We had stopped for the night at a Girl Scout camp. The next morning, I asked the other leader if she had checked the trailer hitch and safety chains. She said, 'Yes.' I drove through the camp to the main gate, where I stopped and asked her again if she checked the hitch and chains. She said, 'Of course I did.' I continued on down a small access road to the highway. I stopped before turning onto the highway and asked her a third time if she was sure she checked. By then she was getting annoyed and replied, 'I've told you yes twice.'"
"I pulled onto the highway and began to drive the speed limit. After a short distance, we came to a very steep stretch of road. Suddenly, I started slowing down and was in the process of pulling onto the shoulder when the hitch gave way. The safety chains caught, but it gave us quite a jolt. If I had still been driving the speed limit, we would have surely wrecked the van full of kids. As we got out to reconnect the hitch, the other troop leader looked at me very weirdly. Before we got back in the van, she said, 'You asked me three times and I kept saying yes, but I really hadn't checked because I didn't think it was a big deal, but YOU KNEW that was going to happen.' Yes, somehow, I knew."
—Anonymous
18."My younger sister and I have always been close. Once, when I was around 15, she told me she had dreamed that I would be bitten by a dog on my left ring finger. A few days later, at my best friend's house, her German Shepherd — whom I had known and been friendly with for years— inexplicably bit me on the left ring finger. My sister and I thought it was a weird coincidence and forgot about it."
"A few years later, when I was in college, she called me saying she had another dream about me. She dreamed I would be in a horrible auto accident and pleaded with me to not get in a car the next day. I told her it wasn't possible because I had to work in the afternoon and was giving my friend/coworker a ride, so I couldn't cancel. The next day on the way to work, my friend and I were tsk-tsking about something her boyfriend had done when she yelled, 'She's not stopping!' just as a '68 Chevy Impala ran a stop sign and T-boned my '76 Fiat smack in the driver's door. I was trapped in the car for three hours and suffered life-altering injuries.
The last time it happened was several years later. I had just taken a home pregnancy test, and it was positive. A few minutes after I told my husband, the phone rang, and it was my sister, who was living with her husband out of state. She immediately said, 'You're pregnant, aren't you?' I told her yes, and expressed my surprise, since we obviously had just found out ourselves. She said she had dreamed I was pregnant, that I would have a boy, and he would be born on a 'T' day. Sure enough, nine months later, my son was born on a Tuesday.
I've learned never to take what she dreams about me for granted again!"
—Lani, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
19."One afternoon, I was sitting on the couch, reading. I was passing time before picking up my son from school. My back was to the glass front door, and I was facing the glass fireplace, which allowed me to see the front door in its reflection. I looked up from my book and looked at the fireplace door. A dark human form walked from my right to my left. I followed it with my eyes. When it left my view from the fireplace, I looked to my left...but there was no one or nothing there."
"Another day, I was in the same position on the couch. Something made me turn to my right. I saw this black form once again. It stepped out from the bookcase in the hall. As I turned to look, it slowly glided backward and away from my view. To my right were the bedrooms, including the guest bedroom where I keep both parents' urns. I like to think they were watching over me and letting me know they were OK."
—Kathy, Nipomo, CA
20."When I was about 19, my girlfriend at the time and I were out late at a friend's house. On our way out, we got into a small argument over something stupid and started yelling at each other. We got into her car — which used to belong to her great-grandmother but wasn't terribly old — and started driving off when suddenly it stopped completely. It was like the battery and engine had both died at the same time; we couldn't get anything to respond. So, I had her put it in neutral and pushed it to a nearby parking lot while we called her grandpa to come give us a jump."
"While waiting, we sat in the car and talked things over and made up. We hugged it out and were both feeling happy and joking with each other again. When her grandpa got there, he took the keys and tried to start it to see what was going on...and it started with absolutely no issues. The car never had any problems like that before or since, and still runs just fine. We both half-jokingly say it was her great-grandmother trying to get us to stop our dumb argument."
—Anonymous
21."For many years, I had a recurring dream of being in a very spooky, old, sinister-feeling basement. There was a plastic curtain or some type of hanging material blocking the view of a room at the far end of the basement, with an old boiler type furnace barely visible. As I would get closer to the hanging curtain, I would feel terrible fear, and the dream would end just as I entered the room."
"One cold, windy night, I was talking to a friend who was taking care of an old mansion built in the late1800s along Lake Michigan. He said the alarm kept going off, and he couldn't figure out why. I had a pretty good idea of what was causing it, so I said I would meet him there to figure it out. When we went inside, it was exactly as I had suspected. Cold air was blowing through a window frame onto the motion detector, causing it to trigger.
Once we figured that out, I asked him if I could see the basement. I had been in the house for a party a few years earlier and saw the upper three stories, which were magnificent. We went down into the basement, and it felt like it went on for three blocks. There was room after room on either side of us. Then, at the very end were two heavy plastic curtains, like what hangs in commercial freezers to keep the cold air inside when the door is open. I suddenly realized this was the location of my recurring dream. We went through the curtains to find a laundry room and three large furnaces in a rather clean room. It wasn't scary or creepy, just a utility room. After that night, I never had the dream again."
—PJ, Kenosha, WI
22."In the summer of 2018, I had a dream that my best friend's dad (who had been deceased for 10 years) was sitting at an all-white kitchen table with me and my best friend. Her dad kept saying, 'Everything will be okay, DeeDee Ann' (her nickname that only he used). She was smiling, and I was clutching my chest. I couldn’t breathe, and neither of them were acknowledging the fact that I was struggling. I woke up with the feeling of dread, and my chest felt heavy. It really bothered me."
"So, on my way to work, I decided to call my friend who was in the dream. I asked her if everything was OK, and she said, 'Why do you ask?' I told her about my dream; it was met with dead silence. She joked that I must be a witch because she was going in for a biopsy of her lung and was so nervous but hadn't told anyone. I reminded her that her dad said it would be OK. She said she felt peace at that moment. The test came back negative and, just like her dad said, everything ended up being fine."
—Anonymous
23."My best friend and I moved into a house together when we were in college. A couple had built the house 60 or so years before and had lived in it their entire lives. The husband had passed away years before, and the wife had been living there alone for many years. The night after we moved in, I heard footsteps creaking up and down the hallway, occasionally stopping outside the bedroom door. My friend and I's bedrooms were on opposite sides of that hallway, so I assumed it was him. After this went on for quite some time, I opened the door to see what the heck my friend was up to. Hearing my door open, he also got up and opened his door to ask what I was doing, because the creaking floor was keeping him awake. We both just stood there and stared across the hall at each other with big eyes."
"We ended up spending the night together in his room, staring at the door. Years later, he moved out, but I could never shake the feeling that something was present in the house that didn't like me. I eventually moved to another house outside of town and sold the old place to another friend. I never had any weird experiences in the new place, and my friend who lives there now has never mentioned anything odd (aside from finding a broom nailed to the wall of the attic above the front door, which apparently used to be done to 'sweep evil out.' I'm not sure it worked.)"
—Bill/Lincoln, Nebraska
24."When I was about 15 or 16, I got my learner’s permit, so I was constantly bugging my mom to let me drive. She was really good about letting me get the experience. One day, were out running an errand and were driving through a small town. We came to the point that we had to stop as we were crossing the main road through town. About a week or two before, they turned a two-way stop into a four-way stop, so I’m sure the locals were still adjusting to these new stops that had never been there before. My mom and I were at this stop sign and, for some reason, I went into a trance-like state. My mom turned to me and asked what I was doing, and at that exact moment, a truck riding on the main street blew through the stop sign. If I had gone, the truck would've T-boned us, and I likely would've died. She asked me how I knew that was going to happen, and I told her I didn’t. I still can’t explain it. It’s as if someone put a spell on me so that I couldn’t move."
"That was an eerie experience, but what was really eerie is it happened again in the early '90s. I was an MP stationed at Ft. Bliss, Texas, a base that is really intertwined with the city of El Paso. I was patrolling with my squad sergeant, and we came to an intersection with traffic lights. Ours was red, so naturally, I came up to the intersection and stopped to wait for it to turn green. It turned green, but I was once again in a weird trance-like state and just sat there. My sergeant turned to me and asked me what the hell I was doing when a truck blew through the red light. Again, I would have been T-boned and likely killed, and maybe my passenger, too. We were continuing our patrol when he turned and asked how I knew to stop, to which I replied that I didn’t. We never talked about it again.
This happening once is weird enough on its own, but a second, near-identical experience five years later is even stranger. It definitely makes me stop and wonder just how much is going on that humans have no idea about."
—Roger, Oregon, USA
25."In college, I lived in a haunted dorm. I had heard spooky stories about what happened but didn’t think too much of it. These were big, single rooms in a convenient place on campus (across from the library and close to classes), so I was just glad to be in the building. I had been living in the dorms for maybe a month or two when the 'incident' occurred. I woke up around 2 a.m. to POUNDING on my door. Like, BANG BANG BANG BANG. It was so loud and so heavy that I could see the door moving when I got out of bed."
"The series of bangs went on for two or three rounds before I finally got up. I thought it was campus security or one of my friends who couldn’t get in touch with me via cellphone since it was late and I had already been asleep. When I finally opened the door...nobody was there. I initially thought someone had been playing a prank on me. The weird part, though, was that my floor had motion sensor lights that were really sensitive. Those lights were off when I answered the door, and the hallway was pitch black.
Other weird stuff happened to me when I lived there, but that was definitely the one that I still think about the most and can’t seem to explain."
—Anonymous
26.And finally, "My dear sister Rose passed away unexpectedly on March 22, 2016. Losing her devastated me. I was mentally very unwell for a long time. I tried to get back on my feet on my own, but thank God my friends helped me to recover. I still grieve for her to this day. She and I were very close. We grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, surrounded by a loving, close-knit family of fantastic Cajun cooks. Rose learned the culinary secrets from our mother and grandmother, great cooks who graced our family tables with famous New Orleans dishes."
"When I was in the Army, I traveled to New Orleans every year to visit Rose for Mardi Gras. My visit with her after Hurricane Katrina devastated our city was heartbreaking and very difficult for both of us. When we arrived at her apartment, I could smell my favorite dish: spicy red beans and rice with Italian smoked sausage.
Rose was extremely considerate. She always sent me care packages no matter where I was stationed. Some packages contained several bags of Camellia Red Beans, a popular local brand in New Orleans. I could never cook them the way Rose did, so I rarely tried. I still have two bags left of the red beans she sent me. I keep them in a drawer in my kitchen.
One day, after I came home from shopping, I went into my kitchen to put my things away. After putting my bags on the counter, I went to the sink to wash my hands. Surprisingly, something on the edge of the sink caught my eye. There on the counter was one red bean! I stared at it for a few seconds, because it was strange to see it there. I knew I hadn't taken out any of my bags of red beans recently. To make sure I wasn't losing my mind, I opened the drawer where I kept my nonperishable items. I took out a few other things to get to the bags of red beans in the back of the drawer. I pulled out one Ziploc bag and then the other. I examined both to make sure I hadn't accidentally opened one of the bags, and both were completely intact and sealed. So, to my relief, I hadn't lost my mind. But I knew that Rose had visited me while I was away and left me one red bean to let me know she was there. It warmed my heart and gave me great comfort to know that my sister was still watching over me."
—Cora Metz, Germany
If you enjoyed these stories, you can read a bunch more of them here.
Have you ever experienced an "unsolved mystery" like these that you just can't explain? A glitch in the matrix, run-in with a doppelgänger, paranormal experience...anything! If so, tell us about it in the comments below or via this completely anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
