These People Who Experimented With the Occult Are Confessing Their Creepiest Experiences

When I was in high school I had this sudden bout of nightmares and sleep paralysis. 

I wasn't going through a stressful time or anything and I don't freak out easily. 

I grew up watching 80's and 90's horror films and I normally sleep with total darkness and doors closed. These nightmares were super sudden and happened almost every night. 

It was constant sleep paralysis where my room was on fire, or there were bats thrashing around above me, or there was a figure hovering over my body and I couldn't breathe (the classic). 

Sometimes my speakers let out strange frequency type sounds even when it was switched off. 

Things would fall off my shelves etc. My mom would always find me sleeping on the couch the next morning with the tv on because it was so crazy.

She didn't want to tell me to see if it would work. I've never had such episodes since.

Pecuche

I’m not a religious person and if anything only believe in doing good and honoring whatever “positive energy” there is. 

What happened to me still makes me feel like SURELY someone was pranking me. I’m not even sure how to share this story, it still freaks me out. 

I want to as a logical person believe there’s no god, or at the very least no such thing as “evil spirits” and this has always shaken me enough to question it.

I’ve only ever told this story to my brother. 

When I was in high school I dated a guy who to be frank was always an asshole, but towards the end of our relationship started worshipping satan. 

One night while on the phone (this was before cell phones) he said he sent “something” to pay me a visit that night. 

Not taking him seriously at ALL, I laughed like, yeah ok, whatever.

We hung up the phone, I fell asleep. In the middle of the night, while asleep, I started feeling the worst stomach cramps I’ve ever had. 

Tossing and turning, waking up and trying to go back to sleep, it would not go away unless I opened my eyes and sat up. 

I settled, trying to sleep, and there was a whisper, it sounded like a man’s voice, “Hey”. 

It was right in my ear. I opened my eyes, looked around- nothing. 

Closed my eyes again, drifted off, and again felt cramping to the point of sickness in my stomach as another whisper sounded, “Wake up”. 

I sat up, the sick feeling stopped. At this point I’m fully freaked out. 

The whispers sounded like someone hovering over me. 

I pulled the covers over my head and just tried to lay still and pretend I didn’t exist and that shit didn’t just happen. 

Minutes went by and I thought everything was fine, then suddenly tapping started in my room, like someone was walking though and smacking things randomly. 

I’m not even ashamed to admit that I BOLTED from my bed, and ripped my bedroom door open and RAN out.

DistinguishedDemon

When I was a teen a bunch of my friends went through a Wiccan phase. 

I honestly thought it was a bunch of hooey, but played along for the most part, because hey they could've got into drugs or horses instead right?

But despite thinking it bulls**t there was one moment that made me question things.

"I have poured my energy into this totem," she declared, then started passing it around the room. 

The others cooed about how they could "feel the power within" as they held it. 

Course someone handed me the stick eventually. I could barely contain my eye roll as I took it.

As I held the walking stick it sent a tingling sensation up my arms.

I passed it on quickly.

Not as dramatic as some of the stories here, but gosh that was weird.

reddit

When I was about 6 or 7 years old I ran into my bedroom to play, but when I went past my bed I saw a gray man in tattered gray clothes. 

He was wearing a beat up trench coat, a white shirt and some plain gray slacks. 

He looked absolutely terrified that I had seen him.

Mr_Funbuns

While in africa I had heard rumors of witchcraft and lighting, belived none of it. 

One day while I has doing humanitarian work in a township (basically big subdivisions of small cinderblock houses) 

I saw a huge red bolt of lighting come out of the sky and hit a shack off in the distance, 

not a cloud in sight, still have no explanation of how TF that happened, everyone in the township said witchcraft.

And I gotta say that along with lots of other crap I saw I am a full believer that witchcraft exists...

rufio824

I used to work in an occult bookstore. We sold mostly psychic nonsense and spiritualist new agey stuff. 

But there was a book case in the back with the real expensive stuff. And the owner was this real old, real wise man.

This woman used to come in when I was working and she'd just talk. For ages and ages. 

It was a non-stop stream of bulls**t. She knew this, she did that, did you know about this, on and on. She'd suck up a ton of time. 

If you've ever heard the term energy vampire it would apply here. When she left you'd just feel drained.

One day she comes in while the owner is there. 

She walks up to the counter and starts her shtick and he's very polite, and listening, but she just sort of runs out of steam. Like, within 60 seconds. 

She hums and haws a bit and then walks out of the store. 

It would usually take me an hour to get rid of her and he shut her down in a minute flat, with a smile on his face.

I mention it to him and he says, "There's a circle of protection painted under the floor for a reason."

shaidyn

An uncle of mine committed suicide so the islands witch doctors did this ritual with fire and my uncles face clear as day came out of the fire screaming at us.

IsmalCox

I got into Leveyan Satanism about 2 or 3 years ago and in the book there's a section that said "don't pray to the devil himself" or something like. 

So one night I did and nothing happened. A few weeks later I had the most vivid dream that stuck with me even to this day. 

In the dream I'm in one of my old high school classes but all the seats are empty except for the one next to me. 

I turn my head and see a super muscular guy in a black t shirt say "I heard you've been trying to reach me" at which point his skin turns into a darker color and gets even bigger. 

We had a long conversation and at the end said "what a waste of time" after I said I was leaving.

Once I open the door and take one step out everything was pitch black, silent and cold. 

What really creeped me out is that at the time I was abusing a couple of drugs, so one time my heart completely stopped beating for a few seconds as I was sitting in bed. 

I remember seeing that same door, the pitch black, freezing feeling before my heart started beating again. 

Doubt it's related but it totally creeped the hell out of me.

Ice-Pony93

I was the victim of a Bear Walker. In First Nations culture, a bear walker is someone who uses our sacred medicines for bad and not good. 

They can make someone very sick. Only a medicine man may reverse it and it often comes as a gamble for the Bear Walker. 

Once reversed, they will suffer more than the one they made sick.

I was 20 years old and very healthy. One night, I had a dream I was in a field and was picking wild flowers. 

From each direction, a tornado was coming at me. I woke up in a fevered sweat. That began 2 months of sheer misery. 

My doctor kept saying that I had a UTI. She would give me antibiotics and it would subside for a while. 

I lost 40 pounds in the span of 2 months. By the end of it, I couldn't walk. Barely ate. Finally, my Mom got tired of it. 

My sister bundled me up and we went to the hospital. 

Though an earlier ultrasound showed nothing, there was a huge growth on my ovary.

A few days later I had surgery and when the doctor came to visit me. He said he never seen anything like it. 

It was a yellow almost concrete like substance around my ovary. 

I got better, but my Mother remained unconvinced and scheduled an appointment with a medicine man. 

We gave him tobacco and he smoked a pipe and sang a song.

He said something along the lines of a woman seeing me at a pow wow. 

She became interested in who I was because of my Mother. She threw a piece of medicine in my path. 

I stepped on it and it went up the right leg. He asked me if I still felt it. I said yes. 

He took a bone, what kind I am not sure. Placed it in the area and began to suck (weird I know.) 

He started vomiting YELLOW. VOMITING YELLOW! 

Like the doctor said. He gave me medicines and rituals for my Mom to do. 

I went home that night and slept for 13 hours. My sickness never returned.

Wackydetective

When I was a young kid, me and my friends were big into ghosts, the paranormal, the occult, or anything else 'creepy'. 

I was a self-identifying 'witch' and we would often go ghost hunting in local places. 

We even came up with a theory that our school used to be an ancient, cursed burial ground.

The thing we loved most was Ouija boards, which is where this story begins.

One day, my friend comes up to me and tells me about an experience he had. He had made a makeshift Ouija board and used it on his school bus. 

He had contacted a ghost that called itself "A", and it was trying to warn us about something. 

Me and my other friend were curious, and wanted to know more. 

I had recently gotten an actual Ouija board for Christmas, and I suggested that we should have a proper session at my house.

The board is saying weird and cryptic things, so we ask its name. The ghost goes by "T". 

We ask what it is, and it just says "PROXY". 

A quick Google search of the word made us realize that T was a proxy for something a lot darker. 

Us being kids, we thought it was the Ouija board demon whose name started with a Z, but now I'm a little unsure exactly what it was proxying for.

Suddenly, we heard a loud noise coming from the closet. 

My friends went over to look, and I stayed back to not take my fingers off the planchette and accidentally end the session without saying goodbye.

They both screamed and ran out.

They both claimed they saw a long, black shadow-y thing with tiny white eyes, curled up in the fetal position on the closet floor. 

We all freak out and end the session right there. I knew we had holy water in the other room, so we went to go get it. 

While we do, we hear another noise. We rushed back, and found that the planchette, which we had taken off the board, 

was back on the board by itself, and all our other items were scattered around the board. We blessed the board right then and there.

But here's the freaky part - T told my friends that he wanted to drain them of their essence, and that he was connected to their families. A told us that he was also connected, but was there to protect them.

We saw the black shadow figure a few more times, most often outside our windows, watching from the street. 

We thought it was T. We also saw a white figure with black eyes a few times, which we thought was A. I also could not go into the basement closet without getting a terrible sense of dread.

Eventually, we get the house smudged and the sightings stopped completely.

Now, I'm a proper Wiccan and have resolved to myself to never use a Ouija board again.

Marycate11

I once met one guy on the Internet, who practised stuff. 

Before we ever met, I told him to make a summoning circle, like the ones you do when trying to reach a deceased person - but to reach me instead of someone deceased.

At that time, I was quite delusional about my body. 

I considered my chest narrow and fat, but everyone else would say I'm very broad, strong and muscular.

So he made the summoning circle and tried to summon me, but it didn't seem to work. Then we both went to sleep. 

The next morning, he said he had a dream about me, and told me that he saw me looking very strong and muscular with broad shoulders. 

But I also had a dream, where I saw him. He was very skinny.

Then we met in real life to verify that. I was exactly like in his dream, he was exactly like in my dream. He even had the same scent about him.

gael_the_druid

My sister was/is really into occult/Wiccan/witchcraft kind of stuff. 

I think she meant to be Wiccan, but a 13 year old isn't incredibly discerning. Around the time she got into it, our house started to get incredibly creepy. 

We would see things move out of the corner of our eyes. Nobody wanted to be home alone. Nobody wanted to be in the living room at night. 

At first, we could blame it on the house and the land. Then we moved, not just houses, but continents. 

The weird stuff followed. All of it was always centered around my sister and her room, and it was always aggravated when we did serious cleaning and especially when we moved.

The height of it was when we were moving back to the US (we had two different flight groups. 

My mom and sister left six weeks before the rest of us to pick the new house while my dad, brother and I cleaned and packed at the old house). 

We heard thumping from my sister's room, the windows and doors would open and close on their own 

(not possible from just the wind) and shadows would move wildly under the door pretty much every night, even with the blinds closed. 

I'm not sensitive/discerning of that kind of stuff, but it was plain as day even to me.

It was only my sister finally moved out of our next house and we cleaned out her room that it all ended. 

Whatever it was, it was tied to my sister and any sort of disorder/uncleanliness.

saxy-french-horn

This happened a few years ago. I was on a dating site and matched with an attractive person. 

So, I started chatting. We made it to the "plans tonight?" part of the conversation and she told me she was going to play hide and seek with 'Fluffy". 

Pointing out the item in their second profile picture, a bloody rabbit mask. Eh, ok let's be weird.

So ,I played along until she mentioned that they would be playing in my basement. I thought "How in the hell? 

Eh, wild guess probably." I lied and told her I didn't have a basement. Immediately, she texted "Oh Yeah?" and I heard "Snnnniiiiicccckkkllllleeeffffrrriiiittttzzzzz" booming from the basement. 

Obviously, I blocked her and froze for an hour before I gathered the courage to check my completely enclosed from the outside basement. 

I didn't find anything, thankfully. I didn't have a smart device at all and I didn't have any speakers that could have been hacked. 

I didn't even have wireless internet at the time. The basement was completely empty. I can't explain it in the slightest.

Snicklefritz646

I was into witchcraft for a little while in high school. I was a white witch ( or at least trying to be) and I got really into tarot cards. 

Being a dumb teenager I didn’t know how to properly use them and instead of using them as an extension of my subconscious, I instead thought of them as their own entity. 

I would speak to them as if they were they’re own person. I never got good readings from them. 

After a while of using them, I would have a feeling of something watching me around my house especially at night. 

It would follow me around the house and would be in my closet when I would go to bed.

The feeling of anxiety and dread that I felt kept getting worse and worse to the point where I wouldn’t sleep at night. 

At some point I stopped practicing and it didn’t go away. It would take a solid few months until it stopped. 

After it stopped, I went to look for my cards and my crystals. I could not find them. 

To this day, 5 years later, I still have no idea what happened to them. I have no doubt in my mind that whatever was following me had something to do with it. 

Tbh when I go to my parents house even now I still feel like it’s watching me, but it’s not as intense as before.

Ssentak

My mom and I are both practitioners of Witchcraft. I am a white witch while my mom is a dark witch which means she deals with hexes, curses, etc.

My mom has hexed people in the past that have hurt her or her family. She is not afraid of Karma or The Rule of 3. 

One of the curses I saw was when I was a child.

There was a man who worked with my stepfather who would constantly steal clients from him or would take credit for my stepfather’s work. 

He actively tried to sabotage my stepfather’s employment and my mother got fed up. 

She performed a hex on him and within days the guy had fallen from favor at work. 

All his clients were canceling appointments for varying reasons, his deals were falling through, his hair was thinning from stress, his family was going through economic hardships, etc. 

The guy’s life completely did a 180 and to this day he hasn’t fully recovered from it. 

He still struggles with making sales and is constantly getting on his employer’s nerves.

CadeyShelley

I went to a voodoo shop in New Orleans that had a lot of signs up that said No Pictures. 

My boyfriend’s mom wanted some voodoo dolls and wanted to see pictures of them before he bought it. 

I told him not to because I had a bad feeling about it.

Immediately after taking the picture his cellphone lost signal, mine was totally fine. 

He couldn’t send the picture so we walked outside and a car drove by and splashed him with water but I was dry.

Freaked us out, I told him to delete the pictures and we had to buy the two dolls he took pictures of.

imwriting

One day when I was 2-3 my mom returned home and called out to me. 

She didn’t receive an answer so she looked for me through the house and when she found me she kept calling my name but I wouldn’t respond. 

When she shook me, I said hi and she asked why I didn’t respond.

I said that wasn’t my name and that she wasn’t my real mom.

She was confused and said what do you mean. Apparently I said that she wasn’t my real mom and have another name that i can’t remember as well as saying my real parents are on their way to get me. 

My mom asked where they are? 

To which I responded oh they died in a car crash in Mexico but they’re on their way. However the next second I went back to normal.

ubetterhope

I was in a coven and we did a ritual for a friend (outside the coven) to get pregnant (with her knowledge and blessing). 

She and her husband had been trying for years, with 2 miscarriages.

Two months later, she's pregnant. We did a reinforcement ritual for a healthy pregnancy and birth. 

She had a son who is now a toddler.

pampamthepam

A mother f**king ghost pulled my father from the ankles out of his bed when he was sleeping because he didn't went to go to his aunt's funeral that same week.

We have had so many paranormal stuff happen to us. Maybe it's because if where we live.

gemitarius

I walked into this book shop next to a Thai food restaurant in my very small home town. 

I was looking around and they had a spell book section. SUPER weird for small town Texas. 

Anyway I picked up a book and immediately got very ill. Like I had to go outside and vomit ill.

My friend who was with me said I just spiked myself out because I was pretty religious at the time (I’m not anymore) but I remember that day pretty clearly.

reddit

I was helping my cousin move into his first apartment. 

When I pulled into the parking lot my daughter looked up from her dolls, said monsters live there.

She spent the day talking to her friends from behind the curtain. 

I didn't tell my cousin about the "monsters". He moved out after 20 days.

iamafmonster

I was in West Africa (Benin specifically) on a work trip and went to a voodoo priestess ritual. 

Just told us the history of voodoo, and how people have perceived it as evil when in reality it is just more of a animistic pagan religion like many others.

Then she did some things as examples etc... talked about twins / twin dolls

(i guess if one twin dies the other has to carry a voodoo around with them 24/7 and interact with it as though it contained the spirit of the deceased twin). 

Talked a lot about how snakes are protectors and such. 

From a cultural perspective it was very fascinating and cool.

BigBearSD

When I was 20 I had a detailed dream that I was talking to a little girl. 

" We have to save him" who? I asked. She looks over the side of the raft and in the black oily water a baby boy is flooting.

I pick him up and hold him in my lap. The girl smiles and tells me " I'm glad we picked you". 

Three years later I have a daughter and a new born son who look just like the kids in my dream.

iamafmonster

I sporadically had night terrors where I would wake up screaming and running through the house. 

But there was a period where I had these every night. So one day my grandma got a gold cross and placed it by my door of my room. I stopped having them for years.

I have always been afraid of the dark, and even now I need noise and my tv on to fall asleep. 

If the tv stops making noise I being half-asleep will put something on. 

This is because when I was 14-18 in the moments where I would be in my dimly lit room with no noise or when I would be in pitch black, I would “see” these two figures in the corner of my room. 

A tall thin man and short, skinny goblin like woman. I would of course ignore them but I would start to hear them taunt me. “I know you see us. 

I know you know we’re here” I would continue to ignore them because I always felt that if I acknowledged them aloud, it would be a step for them and invite further stunts or whatever. 

When I was in the pitch black though it was different. 

I would feel them move toward me and the goblin woman’s voice would bounce around my room. 

But trying to go to sleep and closing my eyes would further terrify me because I felt them inches from my face. 

So before I would open them, I would reach for my light.

You remember that cross my grandma put. Well one night when I was 19, I saw that it no longer upright, but was hanging upside down. 

I had no idea how long it’s been like that but I immediately took it down and just placed it on my dresser. 

Haven’t seen the two since, but I’m never in complete silence or darkness to find out.

ubetterhope

Another time, an old friend of mine and I had an awful falling out. 

Her betrayal really hurt me and I fell into depression for a long while. 

She tried turning friends against me and did everything she could to hurt me. 

My mother decided to return some of that negative energy her way and performed a hex. 

I didn’t know it at the time (otherwise I would have told her not to) but she put a curse on her and her family. 

Well, within days everything went wrong. Her family fell into economic hardships and they lost the family car and almost lost their house, her father had a stroke out of nowhere and with no family history of it 

(thankfully nothing serious) but was bed ridden for days and couldn’t work, her school work suffered, and her family had a period of real tough times. 

My mom didn’t tell me what she had done until months later at which point I was terrified of her.

Magic isn’t something to be done lightly and hexes especially are dangerous things. 

I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole, but my mom actively practices them. I worry when karma comes to collect.

CadeyShelley

A mother f***ing ghost pulled my father from the ankles out of his bed when he was sleeping because he didn't went to go to his aunt's funeral that same week.

This is a pretty mundane story, but I feel it captures something of what 'real' magic might be like.

These stories remind me of my youth. I once met one guy on the Internet, who practiced stuff.

Anonymous User

There have been a couple of things in my life. One day when I was 2-3 my mom returned home and called out to me. 

She didn’t receive an answer so she looked for me through the house and when she found me she kept calling my name but I wouldn’t respond. When she shook me, I said hi and she asked why I didn’t respond.

I have a lot of occult/religious books lying around my house. It runs th gamut from kooky new agey shit to copies of renaissance era books of black magic, Lavey's satanic bible, the actual bible, the quran, yadda yadda yadda....

Both my husband and I have family members who have " a little magic ".

I still have no explanation for this, so may as well put it here.

I was about 13 and my grandma was a believer in spirits, witches, etc.

I saw dash cam footage of a guy driving through America, he stops his car because there are bodies in the road laying there about 50-100 yards away.

I actively practice witchcraft, and honestly the more you dive into the occult/spiritual practices, your line between strange and normal gets really blurry.

Kid I was friends with in HS was jumped on two separate occasions:

I rented a house a few years back and never believed in paranormal or any sort of spirits etc. My first week in the house was find a few creeks here and there, but nothing major.

I took up meditation for a short while for 2 reasons. I had(have) really bad anger issues and I’d heard it helped.

When I first became a pagan (when I was 15 or 16), I celebrated Ostara by leaving an offering to the fae outside on a wooden slab in my garden,

I used to work as a counselor at a Pentecostal Summer camp while I was in school for a degree in Theology.

This is a true story, me and my dad were hunting in Oregon and we were very deep in the woods.

I haven't had them for a while, but I used to get incredibly vivid dreams that all had the same premise: I would wake up (in my dream), walk to my desk, look at the calendar, see the date it would be when I woke up circled in red, and look out of my window. I used to have a river in front of my house, but in my dreams it would be something else. The first dream it was a skyscraper. I noticed a plane crashing down on the skyscraper.

The last time I had a dream like this it was slightly different. I looked out of my window and saw a train station with 2 people. They were "talking" French. (I don't know much French so it were just random words). I then closed the blinds and opened them again. Chaos in streets, with the Eiffel Tower in the back ground. Gun shots. Charlie Hebdo again.

The last apartment I lived in was me and 3 friends living together. The first 8 months in the apartment everything was normal. Then there was one week where weird shit started to happen. All of us got this really bad cold at the same time.

I spent 5-6 years immersed in our local Santeria (Cuban cousin of Voudou) and saw many things that seemed...more than coincidental.

TLDR: Cursed Kris/Keris knife from Indonesia emitted a booming sound late at night while packed in a box. It's a knife, it should not make noises.

Hmmm, lots of stories to tell, but I'll just give you one now…

Never piss off a witch.

My grandmother grew up in post WW2 Nagasaki, her family actually saw the bomb drop from their house in the mountains outside of the city.

i was friends with twin girls. they were 7-8 at the time. for christmas they get a oiuja board.

This was about 30 yrs ago. We were staying with my in-laws (parents) out in the country ( 11 wooded acres with a spring fed pond/swamp) while waiting for our place to be ready to move in. My SO worked midnight shift and didn't drive after dark so I was taking him to and from work.

 One night, I accidentally locked myself out and was forced to sleep in the car. Sometime around 3am I was woke up out of a sound sleep, my heart was racing, hair standing on end...like you might if you woke from a nightmare but I hadn't had one.


I got to where he worked (restaurant) and just about ran inside to wait for him, still pretty creeped out. Then when his shift is over we head out to the car and find there are muddy hand-prints 'all over' it, some with duckweed stuck on them. On the front and rear fenders, one back door and all over the trunk lid.


He suggested waiting until it was fully light out to go home. He had the next 2 days off so made some phone calls and found us somewhere else to say for a few weeks. I've never been back there after dark.

AannyOakley

I haven't seen anything related to my own work that was hella freaky,

SourBlue1992