“None Of The Doctors Have Been Able To Explain How”: 30 Disturbing Experiences People Can’t Explain
We’d like to have an explanation for everything that happens in our lives. It means that life can be predictable, and we can feel more safe. When we think of the unexplainable, an image of aliens often comes to mind. But extraterrestrials are not the only thing that we aren’t able to explain.
The answers in this thread have plenty of examples. One person online recently asked, “What’s the most unexplainable thing that has happened to you?” People shared all kinds of stories, ranging from eerie coincidences and happy accidents to just plain scary experiences that are hard to explain. Do you have a similar tale? Share it with us in the comments!
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I was working in a lab that had skeletal remains, many of which were Native American ancestral remains. I was used to working with skeletons, cataloguing and measuring bones and whatnot, and had never experienced anything that felt supernatural. This lab was created to repatriate the Native American remains that had been excavated locally and been severely mishandled by the university for decades.
I had a box that contained only a skull, and when I opened the box, I *felt* anger resonating from this skull. The entire time it was out of the box, it was like someone was screaming inside my head. I finished as quickly as I could and returned the skull to its place. I had nightmares for several nights and eventually told the professor in charge about it. She was a descendant of the tribe to which these remains belonged and took me very seriously. She added extra offerings to the altar in the lab and smudged the place (burned white sage) and the nightmares stopped.
Never before nor after have I had such a visceral experience.
My daughter was born stillborn. My ex husband and I later tried to get pregnant again for many years, including infertility treatments. Fast forward, I am divorced and later remarried to a man who is 12 years older than me, never had any kids-tried for many years with his ex. I had cancer, so I was required to be on birth control with my chemo med. As part of the requirements they did routine lab work which included a pregnancy test. I got pregnant with my IUD. They kept telling me the pregnancy wasn’t likely to be viable, but my rainbow baby was born last may as perfect as can be. None of the doctors have been able to explain how. Some things are just meant to be I guess.
I was on a payphone and a Turkey walked out of the woods. Bit me on the back of the knee turned around and walked back into the woods.
Before my husband and I ever even tried to get pregnant or decided to have kids, I had a dream that I was chasing around a blonde little boy with big brown eyes who was super rambunctious. This dream is what made me finally want to go for it and have kids.
Two years later, my son looks EXACTLY like the little boy I saw in my dream. Right down to the way his hair grows. And guess what? I chase him around my house at least 3 times a day. He’s a complete wild child. I am 100% sure I saw him in my dream before he was ever even conceived.
Right before I got pregnant with my second child, I had a dream I was holding a little dark haired baby that was looking up at me and snuggling into me. Myself, my husband, and my son were all very blonde as children and bald at birth. There was no reason to expect a dark haired baby, or really a baby with any hair at all.
Daughter was born with a thick full head of hair, dark as the night. And she is 10x more snuggly and cuddly than my son was at her stage.
TLDR: I think that my kids let me know they’re choosing me to be their mom before they come to me.
I have a few. First is when I worked at a grocery store as a teen. Manager called “code G” which was everyone bring their trash to the compactor. The manager was also a family friend so joking around was normal. As I’m throwing trash away, I sense something’s about to be thrown at me and I duck. Rotten food passes over my head. My manager/friend is shocked and questioned how i knew he was about to throw something at me and I just said I had a feeling.
Next scenario is saving my grandmother's life. I used to visit her every couple months or so. Wasn’t a far drive, 30 minutes. One day I was at Walmart and randomly thought of her. Walmart was about half way to her house and I didn’t buy perishables so I figured why not stop and see her. As I pull in her driveway, she sitting on her front porch, she looks up at me and looks back down. I immediately know somethings wrong because she always jumps up to greet me. As I approached I noticed her lips were blue and started calling 911. Her lungs were 80% filled with fluid and two collapsed heart valves. The paramedics told me if I got caught at a red light, she’d probably be dead. This was around 80 years old, she passed away at 95, a year ago.
There was a huge earthquake in San Francisco in the 80s - my dad was there for a conference.
We felt the quake where we were and I suddenly started screaming "Dad!!! Dad!!! look out for the chandelier!!!!" My mom and sibs were understandably freaked out.
When we finally got ahold of him he told us that he'd been in a ballroom when the quake hit and had a sudden urge to jump to the side. A chandelier fell right where he was previously standing.
My family never talks about it - freaked everyone out severely.
This isn't exactly easy to talk about nor is it something that people believe when I tell it but here it is. I died. I got drunk and decided to go for a drive to clear my head, (don't do that) it was a cool night just perfect to have the windows down and I wanted to hear the turbo whistle. It was about 11pm so not too many people out in my area. I took a sharp turn in a 25mph zone at a out 60mph about a mile from my house and rolled my truck. It was noisy, I was bloody almost instantly from hitting my nose/head, rolled I'd say probably 4-5 times. At the end of the rolls I was stopped by a loud crashing sound that was very metallic. The path I took was through someone's driveway and into their garage. I was hanging out of the passenger window, broken bones, blood everywhere, missing extremities, you can imagine the scene at this point. Some part of the door, or fender, or something had pierced my chest. All I know is it was metal. I looked down at it, heard the people in the house scream to call an ambulance and everything went black. The next thing I remember was waking up in my bed, wearing the same clothes, immediately ran outside to see my truck parked in the driveway, completely intact. I walked up to it and touched the hood and it was warm. I hadn't driven since that morning around 8am. It scared me sh**less and I ran back inside and checked my phone, then proceeded to sit in silence and stare at the floor for about 3 hours. No police reports, no news paper articles, nothing. I felt it, I saw it, I heard it. It wasn't a dream and I dont do d***s or have any kind of condition where I hallucinate. I talked to a shaman about it and she pretty much told me I died but got a second chance in another dimension/universe because it wasn't my time yet. I've had chills the whole time typing this, really freaks me out lol.
Shook hands with a stranger at work, he knew instantly i was pregnant, even though i had only told my mom and husband (bf at the time). I told him uncomfortably that no one knew here (at work) and he said something quieter, and ALSO "it's a girl" - it was.
plot twist, this guy says this to everyone hoping to one day be right and really freak someone out
A black bear snuck up on me while I was in my garage and sniffed the back of my neck (I was on my knees putting together a grill).
I thought it was my neighbors dog at first and had to do a legit double take when I turned to pet.
Weird one but when I was a teenager I almost died. I was on a cross country team and was running through a forest and suddenly got a cramp which made me stop moving for a second at that exact moment I stopped running a tree landed exactly where I would’ve been. That cramp saved my life.
I’m a pediatric occupational therapist. The first patient I ever lost was a 2 year old girl who we knew would eventually leave us due to multiple medical problems. She passed peacefully at home, where we did all our therapy sessions. She was never not attached to multiple machines that kept her alive—a trach, vent, Co2 monitors—so many wires and alarms.
A week to the day after her passing, I woke from a dream where I was holding her on my lap. Her mother was next to me, and we were playing. She was completely healed—not a wire in sight. Smiling, talking (she was not able to speak in life), and being a normal 2 year old. I knew she was ok. I already believed in heaven, but this made me believe I saw her there.
I took a different way out of hospital not wanting to see a certain person, I backed around and hid around the dumpster area. Tripped over a person who didn’t move? Used my phone light to see and it was unconscious young guy. Checked and barely alive. I knew enough to go out and yell for help and bring Narcan? People arrived one EMT was great an got him awake they carried him inside. I checked on him the next shift and as I passed by there was the Dad & Mom hugging an taking to him. I felt good they didn’t lose their son and I heard them talking about rehab and telling them how much they loved him so I kept my mouth shut and went back to my department to work. I’m so glad he was found, seemed like a real nice family.
This happened just under 6 months ago, but i had intense dreams for about 2 weeks straight of the same man that i had never seen before in my life, and every single instance that i saw him, he was trying to hurt/k**l me. literally every time i slept, he was suffocating me with a bag, or slipping something in a drink, finding my house & stalking me, etc.
After dreaming about him for two weeks or so, i met this man irl at a gas station. we didn’t talk to each other, i knew nothing about him, but he was there and i could immediately tell it was him. i finished pumping my gas and got in my car, and this man came up in front of my car, putting his hands on the hood, and just staring at me through the windshield. it was insanely creepy, and i couldn’t leave. it was late at night so there weren’t many people nearby, and i just got this horrible gut wrenching feeling of wanting to puke because something was very wrong. i honked my horn super loud & he flinched and pulled away from my hood, so i took the opportunity to drive away. i have no idea who he was, i had never seen him before in my life, but for some reason i saw him harming me in my dreams, and i genuinely think that my fight or flight response in that moment & honking at him saved me from whatever he was going to do while camping out in front of my car.
First is simply that I have epilepsy. No known cause. After many years and lots of testing I had surgery that removed my left hippocampus.
Post surgery I am a different person. I like different things. I am more extroverted. I am more emotional. My epilepsy is still an issue in my life, but with the new me it’s worth it.
Perfectly healthy two year old daughter laid down happy and healthy to sleep as with every other night. It was her last earthly activity. She never woke the next morning. Autopsy didn't determine a cause of death. There is no scientific explanation as to why she's not here with me today. And that's a type of lack of closure that nearly k***ed me. It is hard to have what your child doesn't. It's hard to be ok with living when your baby isn't. It's nearly impossible to have no explanation for such a significant loss. Unexplainable and unreal. To this day.
Many years ago, we were very broke. I had been laid off from my job and struggling to find work. I was sitting on the couch and there was a pillow on the floor beside me. I had two small kids and they were playing in a corner of the room about 15 feet away. I heard a random plunk and a penny had landed on the pillow beside me.
My kids had not thrown it and I had no idea where it came from. I took it as a sign that things would work out. The next day I got a call about a job.
Many years ago I woke up sick and couldn't go to school. It was the only time I have ever been sick for school. Anyway I had a small black and white tv in my bedroom and I turned it on and watched live as a space shuttle took off and then suddenly blew up. Many years later I phoned in sick from work, something I had never done before. I turned on the TV just in time to watch live as an airplane flew into a tower.
You know sleep paralysis demons? Well I was finally able to touch (and hold on to) one of them. Felt 100% like a human arm. Interestingly, as soon as I touched it, I wasn't scared anymore, and the"shadow person"(!?) started to panic instead.
So far cancer. I'm 21, when I was 20 I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. If you know anything about bladder cancer it is very very common..... In people who are 70+. In people my age or younger, it is exceptionally rare. So rare that from all of recorded Medical history until 2010, there was only 125 cases worldwide of bladder cancer presenting in a patient 20 and under. Now I can think of alot to explain why I got cancer, but even my doctor was baffled. It took 7 months to diagnose because all my doctors were like there's absolutely no way you have bladder cancer. It's unheard of. Fast forward to the same doctor telling me in all his years as a urologist and all the thousands and thousands of patients he's seen with bladder cancer, I was the youngest by a long shot. Nobody that came to mind has come close to being as young as I am with the disease. He wants me to take part in genetic testing so I can know to look out for cancer in my children one day and because the medical field knows so little about bladder cancer at my age, they might learn something from my case. The good news is, in just about every single case of bladder cancer at my age, including myself, it's literally almost ALWAYS curable, and may even be one of the easiest cancers to beat. During my fight with it I did a ton of research and I couldn't find not ONE case where somebody my age died with it. Not one. It was scary nonetheless but I am here about 6 months since my surgery and chemo, I had my 3 month checkup about a month ago and so far so good. I was told it's unlikely to ever return. Tldr the most unexplainable thing that's happened to me is getting an extremely rare cancer. Edit, I wanna clarify I am all good. It didn't spread anywhere, they cut all of it out in one go, I am 100% cancer free.
On our first date, my now wife and I were hiking along a well travelled trail in a national park in TN. We had gotten turned about and ended up walking down a lesser travelled path that led to some primitive camping sites. It wasn’t until about thirty minutes down this path that she and I both stopped talking and started listening.
See, we couldn’t hear anything beyond our walking. It’s a bright sunny day in the middle of spring. No birds chirping, no water running in the background, no wind rustling in the trees, and no insects buzzing around, just dead silence. She turns and looks at me as I am getting goosebumps and says, “I don’t like this, something is here.” We quickly turned around and power hiked back the way we came.
A few minutes later it was like someone had flipped a switch, the sound came back all at once, birds, wind, insects, all of it. We hit one more spot later down the trail where everything stopped and the air felt heavy again. We noped out of there as fast as we could.
If you are from areas around the Appalachian mountains, you know there are some things best left alone in the woods.
Lost my ATM card, went to the bank to have it replaced. Told them what I wanted the PIN to be, and they told me that the PIN would be randomly assigned and mailed separately, and once I received both I could then change the PIN to what I wanted it to be.
The randomly assigned PIN was the one that I wanted.
A couple things. One of them being a dream about an event that hadn’t happened yet, with people I hadn’t met yet, that transpired years later. And another dream that involved me talking to my dead best friend who was alluding to things that I didn’t know about my bf at the time that ended up being true. That s**t still f***s me up.
When I was a kid my family used to watch Jeopardy all the time, one night we were watching and saw a clue about the movie Click. My mom, sister and I all shouted the answer at the same time and the tv froze. We sat there for a few minutes waiting and then one of us eventually suggested we try saying “click” in unison again. We did and the tv unfroze. Freaked my dad out really bad.
I was at my house after hanging out with my family all day. It was about 11 when I came in. I started taking my meds and heard a low creepy voice say fire, there going to be danger. (Meds are for acne). I was so scared I thought my dad was messing with me, but no one was in the house, absolutely no one. and the next day we hung out again. It was 12 when we came in to get more drinks. We all smell this horrible stench of smoke. We check every normal place, microwave/oven/fireplace. Nothing. We run downstairs and cannot find the fire. The smell is getting worse, it’s in the basement by density of smoke. We call the fire department and they find an electrical fire in our wall, it would have burned our house down if we went to bed and thought it was fine. Yeah, 12,000 in damages and it’s all fixed…. Never heard it again.
Both of my parents (who were divorced) essentially died on the same day this past December. My dad was in a hospital in Detroit for a double bypass after his fifth heart attack and died from complications late on a Monday. Earlier that same day, around 4pm, I found out my mom had unexpectedly died in her home in a tiny town in upstate Michigan, four hours from Detroit.
It’s about as s****y a situation as you could imagine.
I was a roofer, highly skilled in the trade. I was loving life, working hard and planning my future.
I had just set up a roofing business too. I woke up one morning itching everywhere, looked in the mirror and seemed a bit red. I went to work as usual thinking this sun burn itches so bad!
Following few days I became slow and drearily, itching like my skin was on fire, as if thousands of bees were stinging me over and over. My skin had become covered with a hard disgusting rash . Then came the boils all over.
After being to my GP and then being sent to a specialist, it turned out I became allergic to the sun. After 28 years of being a normal outgoing outdoors kind of person... Overnight unknowingly my life has flipped. No more going out in the daytime without major coverage and special sun cream.
I've never been giver a proper answer to why this happened to me.. this "disease" or whatever it's classed as, has ruined my life. I was told to just "avoid exposure to the sun".
This was so unexpected and unexplainable.
I'm in a better place now, 4 years on since it happened. But not one day goes by without me questioning, why?.
He answers his own question, he says "overnight" - so clearly it is a classic case of vapirism
Many years ago during my A-Level final exams, I panicked like hell in the lead up to the exam for one subject because I basically hadnt revised at all, and it was my weakest subject. I had gone through a phase during that school year of slacking off like mad, and it reflected in my grades all year - but realisation hit me in the week before this exam that I had severely screwed up. I wouldnt be able to pass, let alone get a good grade.
I still cant remember a single thing about the day of the exam - my friends later said I felt a bit off, more quiet than normal, but "me".
But I cannot recall anything at all about that day.
I got an A on that exam. I still dont know how. I still dont have any decent knowledge of that subject.
I walked into that exam room, wrote for 2 hours, and got an A.
your identical twin drugged you, took your place in the test, and passed for you
My wife's car got reverse-robbed.
I went out to my wife's car and found that everything inside had been tossed all over the place. I mean everything from every compartment just thrown all over the inside of the car.
As we were cleaning up and putting everything back together, we found a $50 bill that neither of us could possibly have left there.
This happened 25 years ago before everyone had access to cell phones and you couldn’t find personal information online . Me and my friend were driving when she decided to take a short cut through an alley, all the sudden I heard my cellphone ring which I had just bought the week before , there’s was a lot of static noise coming from and all the sudden a woman on the side started telling me “ you need to get out of there , turn around and go the other way “ I just look at friend confused when all the sudden there’s was a man standing in the middle of the alley with a knife on his hands me and my friend panicked and started screaming as she put the car on reversed and got out there . Until these day I had no clue who called me or how they knew my number since I haven’t given out to anyone else outside my friend.
I was in high school at a friends birthday party. Her parents booked us a suite at a resort hotel, the kind with a mini water park you can use free if you’re staying in the hotel. It was a pool party/sleepover, and we got the whole suite to ourselves, though her mom was in an adjoining room. We were staying up late watching movies, one was a horror movie about a mu****er, and we were doing what teenage girls do, getting scared of nothing. Somehow we got it in our heads there was a k***er outside waiting to break in and m***er us. Me having to be the brave little skeptic decided I would prove to my friends we were safe by opening the curtains. There was a man standing right outside looking in through the window. I closed the curtains quickly, and we were all screaming. Her mom came rushing in, we told her what happened, and she checked outside but there was no man. To this day I wonder what that man was doing. Was he really a mu****er who got scared away by our screaming? Was he some guy passing by that happened to look over at the exact moment the curtains opened? Did we just imagine the whole thing from sitting up talking about how scared we were? Was he a peeping Tom trying to catch a glimpse of 14 year old girls in pajamas? Did he overhear our conversation and think it would be funny to play a prank on us? Spooky. lol.
My father was a beekeeper. He was very proud of his bees, which he had bought decades before from monks at an abbey in Devon who keep bees known for their docile nature and which have a particular colouring. It was always immediately obvious if his bees swarmed in the summer, for example, because they looked different from all others in the area. He died suddenly (on his birthday in June) and lo and behold, there was a swarm of his bees gathered in the yew tree over his grave when we buried him. June is swarming month but it was very strange.
The bees were saying good bye. I've heard stories of it happening over the years.
Load More Replies...I've only had one incident that I can't explain. I was just leaving my part time weekend job and about to go home, when I felt like something was telling me to go check on my cattle at a rent pasture in the opposite direction. I didn't hear a voice, but felt a compulsion to do that. I did. I drove up to the gate, and I could see the cattle grazing on the opposite side of the pasture, near a busy road, and everything looked okay, so I was about to go home. Again, it felt like something was telling me to go check them closer. So I opened the gate and drove over to them. Someone had run through the fence and then drove off, leaving a large hole in the fence. If I hadn't gotten there when I did the cattle probably would have been out on the road in another half hour, and who knows how many cattle or people could have been hurt. I'm not one who sees or imagines divine intervention in everyday things, but I don't have a better explanation.
valentine's day 1997. i got up to go to work but decided to go to dr. instead as i had been having symptoms of a sinus infection for a couple of days. on the way back home i was stopped at a light and suddenly got very dizzy & confused. the inside of the car looked distorted. my head & face felt like someone had hit me with a bat & my chest ached. this lasted maybe 30 seconds. also heard my son's voice-no words just his voice. as soon as i get home the phone rings & it's the police asking if i had a son named ____. he had been in an accident & was enroute to local hospital. got there just as he was brought in. his face had broken the steering wheel, flattening his nose & there was a bruise across his chest where his seatbelt had been. my experience made sense immediately.
My father was a beekeeper. He was very proud of his bees, which he had bought decades before from monks at an abbey in Devon who keep bees known for their docile nature and which have a particular colouring. It was always immediately obvious if his bees swarmed in the summer, for example, because they looked different from all others in the area. He died suddenly (on his birthday in June) and lo and behold, there was a swarm of his bees gathered in the yew tree over his grave when we buried him. June is swarming month but it was very strange.
The bees were saying good bye. I've heard stories of it happening over the years.
Load More Replies...I've only had one incident that I can't explain. I was just leaving my part time weekend job and about to go home, when I felt like something was telling me to go check on my cattle at a rent pasture in the opposite direction. I didn't hear a voice, but felt a compulsion to do that. I did. I drove up to the gate, and I could see the cattle grazing on the opposite side of the pasture, near a busy road, and everything looked okay, so I was about to go home. Again, it felt like something was telling me to go check them closer. So I opened the gate and drove over to them. Someone had run through the fence and then drove off, leaving a large hole in the fence. If I hadn't gotten there when I did the cattle probably would have been out on the road in another half hour, and who knows how many cattle or people could have been hurt. I'm not one who sees or imagines divine intervention in everyday things, but I don't have a better explanation.
valentine's day 1997. i got up to go to work but decided to go to dr. instead as i had been having symptoms of a sinus infection for a couple of days. on the way back home i was stopped at a light and suddenly got very dizzy & confused. the inside of the car looked distorted. my head & face felt like someone had hit me with a bat & my chest ached. this lasted maybe 30 seconds. also heard my son's voice-no words just his voice. as soon as i get home the phone rings & it's the police asking if i had a son named ____. he had been in an accident & was enroute to local hospital. got there just as he was brought in. his face had broken the steering wheel, flattening his nose & there was a bruise across his chest where his seatbelt had been. my experience made sense immediately.