“What Mysterious Thing Happened To You That You Still Can’t Explain?” (30 Answers)
Interview With ExpertThe majority of things that happen in life can be easily explained by logic or some area of science, whether it's economics, sociology, psychology, or whatever else. Yet, from time to time, some people experience things that have origins that aren't so solvable. So, they get stuck in people's memories for a long time, usually due to how odd or even spooky they are.
These stories are today's focus. So, let's take a trip. Just beware: some of them are rather creepy!
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I heard a voice, not with my ears but also not in my head, that said, "you don't have to go home". This was as I was walking home, and for some reason, it just woke something in me. I turned around and walked away. Slept on the streets for a couple of weeks before being taken into foster care. That is how I left my abusive family. I just decided in that moment to not go home, and that was that.
Angel? Higher self? Hallucination? I have no explanation.
It’s near Christmas of 1980, I’m a young teenager in the hospital (M.D. Anderson) who was going to be spending Christmas (and New Year’s) in the hospital. So it was extra important to my dad that he got me whatever I wanted for Christmas. I wanted a memory game called Simon. It was one of THE it toys to have that Christmas. Impossible to get but my dad was going to at least try.
My dad is at Toys R Us staring at the empty shelf where the Simon game would be if it were in stock. An employee with the name Matt on his name tag attached to his Toys R Us vest asked my dad if he could help him. My dad said he was looking for a Simon game. Matt simply said, “Follow me” and led my dad back to a warehouse area and there was one Simon game by itself and, without saying anything, picked it up, handed it to my dad and walked away.
My dad went to pay for it and a confused cashier asked my dad, “Where did you get this because this has been sold out for days?” My dad said Matt got it for me. The cashier, more confused now, said, “We don’t have a Matt that works here.” My dad described Matt and how he brought my dad to where it was. The cashier is now freaking out because no one with Matt’s description works there.
Both my dad and I had an extra special Christmas that year.
Five Christmas’ later I wound up working at that same Toys R Us.
Was run over by a van as a child. Dragged for 3 blocks before the van stalled when my leg covered the exhaust pipe (burning a hole in my knee). I survived with mostly burns (road rash on my face and arms), a hairline fracture in my ankle, and the hole in my knee. The bicycle I was riding somehow bent around my head and kept it from hitting the ground so I never sustained any head trauma. The chances of all of that happening are astronomically low.
I don’t want to sound judgy, but you are a pretty bad driver if you drag a child and their bicycle under your vehicle for three blocks.
As we can see in this list, many people have experienced mysterious and unexplainable events that stuck with them.
To talk more about them, Bored Panda reached out to philosophy writer Jonny Thomson. He said that, in a way, he has experienced some unexplainable and overwhelming things himself brought on by, for example, love for his children: "There are times when I feel I love them with such intensity that the word love feels inadequate and the feeling spills into the religious. It feels overwhelming at times."
Classical music also brings this kind of feeling for Jonny: "I grew up near Canterbury and would sometimes sit [and] listen to choirs sing there. I would often cry and never know why. Inexplicable feelings pulled by inexplicable forces."
Several years ago, I was having a hard time with life. My mom had recently died, my dog had recently died, and I may have been going thru some sort of midlife crisis.
I decided to try meditation to try to get a grip on everything.
But I had no idea how to meditate. (Still don't), so I found a guided meditation on YouTube.
The video was pretty typical; get comfortable, focus on breathing, blah, blah, blah.
Then, he says, "I want you to focus on the memory of your best day".
Immediately, I remembered my best day. It was the summer after I graduated from high school. I had no "adult" plan and made a spur of the moment decision to take a road trip. I had quite a bit of money from all the graduation gifts.
My mom was not on board. She said there was no way she would allow an 18 year old girl to drive around the US on her own.
We were arguing about it and the friend of my stepbrother overheard. He offered to go with me.
We talked about it for weeks and begrudgingly my mom gave permission.
The first few days were awkward. I knew this boy, but didn't really *know* him.
But, with nothing else to do while driving, we talked about everything. We had so much more on common than I had previously realized. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we became friends.
The specific memory during the guided meditation was of the 2 of us sitting in a diner. We sitting across from each other in a booth. I can perfectly remember how the sunlight reflected off his hair and in that moment, I was in love with being alive.
But here's the thing.....that never happened. None of it. I didn't go on a road trip. I never became friends with this person.
When the video told me to remember my favorite memory, the diner scene popped in my head and I somehow knew the back story.
It was one of the strangest things I've ever experienced.
I know it sounds like I just made up an imaginary story, but it didn't feel like a made up story. It was a memory. I wasn't daydreaming; I was *remembering*.
Should be made into a movie. One of those movies with a weird twist at the end.
I was working as a cashier in a restaurant. The first thing we’d do after greeting a customer was get their name to write at the top of their ticket. This customer was particularly chatty, and I was making small talk with her when a very strange look came over her face and she got quiet. It was then that I realized I’d written a name, her actual name, on her ticket without ever asking her for it/being told what it was. It was her first (and s**t, probably her last) time in that restaurant.
I once was changing pants in my room before work and took off my belt. After putting on my other pair of pants, I went to put my belt back on but it belt was gone. No one else was in the room and I spent a good 10 minutes looking for it as I had simply set it on the floor. It’s been 10 years and I’ve never seen that belt again.
This happened at my ex's apartment. We were watching a movie, and a framed picture he had hanging on the wall above a chest of drawers fell off the wall. We heard it clatter to the floor and we heard the glass break. We never found the framed picture. No glass on the floor, no nothing. It was just gone.
Yet, sometimes, even the most seemingly inexplicable things can be logically reasoned. Let's take a story about flickering lights from this list (that kind of reminds us of Stranger Things) -- maybe it can be written off as some electrical fault.
Jonny reiterated our idea that some things can be explained by something like a disease, electricity, or something similar, even if explaining it this way can seem kind of dull.
As an example, let's take the eerie feeling that someone is following you -- apparently, it can be caused by certain forms of epilepsy. Or, seeing invisibly moving things can be a sign of a certain region of a person's brain being damaged.
Then, some out-of-body experiences, a sensation of a person's consciousness leaving their body, can also be explained medically. Experts say that things like stress, trauma, and conditions like epilepsy, migraines, or even cardiac arrest can be a reason for this.
When I was taking care of my dad we used to eat hot dogs whenever I was too tired to cook. One night I got home and as I was turning the stove on I remembered we'd run out of buns. I double-checked both the fridge and the pantry, but there were none. We were completely out. So I made clam chowder and made a note to get more buns the next day. I got up at 6 the next morning and went downstairs to start breakfast, and there on the countertop, by itself, presented as if a gift, was a brand new unopened bag of hot dog buns. Dad and I had both slept through the night. So it would seem at some point between midnight and 6am, a bag of hot dog buns just materialized on the counter from the void.
When I was like 12, our power flickered on and off repeatedly one night and all the lights turned blue and made the weirdest electrical screaming sound I've ever heard in my life, it was also happening at the neighbors across the street. It lasted about 20 minutes before everything went back to normal.
My grandma was hysterical and threw me into the tub (I'm not sure why), and grandpa went outside to investigate. After a long time he came in, reassured my grandma it was just a downed power pole down the road and people were already there, and sent us off to bed. However, he didn't go back to bed and sat downstairs watching the door all night with his shotgun without sleeping. He admitted several years later that he actually had no idea wtf that was and there was no pole.
During a brownout, the voltage is reduced, causing dimming lights and slower device performance, but power remains partially available. this can cause lights to change colour. The more rural you are the more it can happen, at least in the UK
When I was a baby my Mom said something woke her up in the middle of the night to check on me. I was hanging by my head outside my crib. Wormed my body out but my fat head got stuck. Probably should be dead.
I somehow did a swan dive out of my crib and busted my head pretty good. I giggled all the way to the hospital with blood all over me. I had finally made my escape from nap time!
But sometimes, the logical stuff isn’t the answer that is satisfying enough. Our interviewee Jonny revealed that for the topic of unexplainable phenomena, he likes to look at theological works despite not being especially religious himself. For instance, Rudolf Otto's "The Idea of the Holy" talks about numinous experiences. "It is a kind of 'overpoweringness.' It's the feeling of being swept away by intense, unswimmable currents but not necessarily in panic. It's tremendous—a mysterious kind of power that both repels in its intensity and attracts in its appeal."
Yet, instead of religiousness, Jonny assigns it all to something more similar to aesthetic experiences and moments of profound love: "That mixture of fear and attraction is, for me, at the heart of the mystery."
It’s kind of a sad but bittersweet memory. My grandma (I call her Mimi) was on hospice. We thought she had a few weeks and I planned on going to see her the next weekend again.
It was my first day back to work after the holidays and I all of the sudden felt really sick and went home, which is kind of difficult in my job especially the first day back. I was standing in my bedroom trying to figure out what I wanted to do, kind of restless and all of the sudden felt this huge emotional drop, like deeeeep all encompassing sadness. I could hardly breathe. I took a shower because it calms me, and about 5-10min later my mother called to tell me my Mimi passed. I just said, “I know.” 🥹.
i had a similar experience. 02 may 1985, i was 17 years old. i had just finished running a couple of miles. passed my mom as she was heading out to go shopping with her best friend. "by mom, have a good time. see you after work!" took a shower and was getting ready for work at burger king. i was compelled to listen the christian rock band "petra's" album. usually, the album would leave me in a good mood. but i was getting depressed. there is song on it called "graverobber", god's love comforting people when one passees away. this REALLY got me down. typical teen, shrugged it off and went to work. couple hours into my shift my sis in law showed up. my mom had died from a massive heart attack.
Ok this is a weird one. I was about to get on the feeder road to a busy highway. As i was approaching the intersection, I heard a booming male voice IN THE MIDDLE OF MY HEAD! saying "Check you tires before you get on the highway". It was not a voice I recognized nor was the radio on. I did a hasty U-turn and went straight to a tire guy I have used in the past. As he was checking the front tires he turned the wheel to reveal the tire so badly worn you could see the metal exposed wires. My tire guy said." Good thing you came in here, if you would have gone on the highway, that tire would have blown and you could have been killed!" I know this sounds like b******t, but it happened. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since. No, I am not delusional or on any meds. As I said, I did not recognize that voice. It was so jarring that i did that U turn without even thinking about it. I posted this before and people said Angels or some other divine interference. I am not a religious guy or prone to that sort of easy out explaination. Still mystified after 10 years. I also have a UFO story with my Mom and brother,,,,,Ah another time,,,.
A bit of a back story, I was ten when my mom died. She was 29 and had been suffering with cancer for eight years when she passed. She was an awesome mom in every way despite her illness. I miss her every day. But when I was pregnant I was really missing her to the point I thought I might need counseling. I was praying to have peace about, but was very sad I didn't have her with me through this pregnancy. For the first and only time in the 49 years she's been gone I dreamed of her. I dreamed that night she was good enough to come down from heaven and spend the day with me. We did what we normally used to do which was go to Marshall Field's and shop and have lunch. It was such a happy healing time. ( I was at my grandma's house when my mom passed so I never got to say goodbye.) Anyway we finished up shopping and eating and went back to my childhood home's backyard and she gave me a kiss and a hug goodbye and told me she loved me and went back up into Heaven. I woke up and had such peace and healing. I went through the rest of my pregnancy with no issues and treasure that dream to this day.
When faced with the unknown, some others go for paranormal explanations. Typically, these experiences are attributed to something magical, folkloric, or simply supernatural.
To talk more about this, Bored Panda also got in touch with paranormal investigator Alexandré LeMay. They believe that: “Most hauntings are fragments of information stored in time after an event of intense energy and triggered through the right conditions. A smaller percentage of the time, it's an intelligent haunting, and that's where things get a little more complicated. We don't have all the answers, but I personally feel that when the soul passes on, small fragments of their being exist[s] outside of time and continue in these spaces we experience them.”
Speaking of hauntings, one of the most commonly discussed paranormal phenomena is ghosts and the big question: "Are they real?"
Not me but my grandparents story.
My grandpa may have take 5 sick days off his entire career. My grandma was a stay at home wife. After he retired they both worked at a local flower shop. After about 15 years he never once took a day off. One day they were getting ready for work and he said he was feeling off and was going to stay home. She got in the car, turned it on, had a weird feeling, then decided to stay home as well since it wasn’t like him. As she opened the door she heard a thud. Turned the corner and saw my grandpa bleeding from his ears. He had a massive brain aneurysm. She called 911 and they just so happened to be about 100 yards away from their house for whatever reason. Immediate surgery at the hospital. Doctors said the aneurysm is the type that if she would have been even a minute later and the ambulance wasn’t right there, he 100% would have died.
To this day she can’t explain what told her to stay home. Whether it be a divine intervention. Or being married for so long and knew something was wrong. But everything went so perfect for him to survive it.
The “thud” sound and the bleeding ears really got me in this one.
2017. My wife, a good friend of ours, and myself were walking in a small fishing village in the northeast. It was a small town- but no one was out that night. We were talking and walked by a dock. My wife leaned over to peer into the water. At that moment, a creature roughly three-four feet long with a splayed tail and dragonfly like features flew into her face. She screamed- and it disappeared into the dark of night. No creature like that lives in Iceland. If we all weren’t there, we wouldn’t believe it. Still have no idea what to make of it.
The next day an Icelander told us it was a troll, but I think he was messing with us.
When I was 10 years old I didn't want to go to school one day. I faked a stomachache so my Grandmother would let me stay home. Ive always been a bad liar, so my Gma tried to call my bluff. She told me if I was too sick for school then she would be scheduling me a Drs Appointment. 3 hours later I was rushed into emergency surgery. My fake illness was actually appendicitis and It was so inflamed that if I hadn't come in that day my appendix would have ruptured potentially [ending] me. I felt 100% fine that day. Faking sick saved my life...
Basically, ghosts are believed to be inhabitants of the netherworld that visit our world from time to time in a variety of forms, depending on the witness. The belief about ghosts and the things they cause on earth is so common that in many societies, funerals are held for the deceased just so they won't come back in this form and haunt the living.
Alexandré said that when it comes to beliefs about things like ghosts, people tend to bring their own beliefs and perspectives into each experience: “A catholic tends to see entities through a demonic lens, whereas a skeptic is more likely to experience nothing at all. People tend to get exactly what they expect from hauntings. It's all so energetically intertwined that someone who doesn't believe, most of the time, will not give the situation the energy it needs to manifest, in my opinion.”
Sadly (or not so sadly, depending on how you perceive ghostly presences), it was reported that science doesn’t support ghosts' existence.
There's a machine called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was built to help scientists answer fundamental open questions of physics. It has already helped them to learn about particle decay, find hints of new particles, and even reexamine the current knowledge about the Big Bang. Physicist Brian Cox believes that the LHC can help dismiss the existence of the paranormal, as even it seemingly can't find any tangible evidence for them being real.
I had just finished replacing all the burned out bulbs in my rented condo. I was talking to my wife and said “but when the one above the stair well goes out I’ll call maintenance for that cause I’m not climbing up there”. We then looked at that specific light and at that moment it burned out. This was like 5 years ago and we still talk about it.
My sister and I were sitting in the living room reading on a cloudless day around 2 pm or so. All of the sudden, it was like I went blind. Pitch black, couldn’t even see a hand in front of your face dark. It lasted a little more than a second or two, and when I got my vision back I looked over at my sister. She had the same face I did and asked me what the f**k just happened. Big bay window in our living room so I still have no explanation of what happened.
I hit a patch of black ice in the dark going 60mph down the highway. At the time, I drove a 1 ton cargo van. It hit the guard rail and flipped. Not only did I walk away without a scratch, the car was drivable and I was only 30 min late to work.
This, in a way, proves that those who claim to see ghosts only do so because they've led themselves to believe they have. Basically, if you think paranormal activity is real, you are more inclined to believe you have witnessed it rather than look for a logical and common-sense explanation for it.
Well, that means that we need to find another explanation for the mysterious stuff on this list, as, apparently, ghosts weren’t responsible for them. Maybe sometime in the future, another kind of research will come and disprove the one we discussed. Only time will tell.
Have you ever experienced something mysterious and unexplainable? Share it with us in the comments, and upvote the experiences you find the most interesting!
Story starts a similar way to some other stories in here. was getting ready for school one morning in about 5th grade, put my socks on my chair, turned around to put on a shirt, turned back to chair, no more socks. weird but whatever, i dont have time to question it. i grab another pair and head to school.
the real weird part comes five years later. i’m fifteen, theres a big family dinner at my house. dad decides to get fancy and break out the cloth napkins from our dining room closet that we absolutely never open. one of my cousins opens her napkin, which had been neatly folded and not touched since i was probably about seven (my parents dont host a lot of the family get-togethers) and sitting inside is *one* of my missing socks from 5th grade. no trace of the other one to this day, and im coming up on my 22nd birthday.
Friend was visiting for a weekend nd we where chilling in the basement watching movies and catching up when i ran upstairs to the kitchen to grab a snack. When i was about to head back downstairs i noticed what i thought was my friend walking up the stairs to the uper floor so i assumed my friend was going to the bathroom. When i went back down they where as i left them chilling on the couch. After explaining we both terrified checked the house. Nobody else was ever found in the house and no sign of break in. Still cant explain it.
A few weeks ago, just after I'd turned out the lights for the night, I heard a woman's voice speaking in the kitchen. I live alone. Then I heard her again and went tiptoeing out in the dark, only to hear the 3rd message, something like, "Roomba is not square on the charger." Whew!
Had my wedding ring fall off of my finger while I had my hand dangling out of a car window while driving. Very upsetting to arrive at the hotel I was staying at to realize it had slipped off, wasn't in my pockets or in the car anywhere - checked the floorboards, under the seats, console, I even checked the trunk - and figured it was probably laying on the side of the road somewhere along a 60 mile stretch of interstate. But I was exhausted. It had been a very stressful day of travel. I checked into my hotel room, pushed my suitcase just inside the door of my room and passed out on the nearest bed. Didn't even stop in the bathroom to pee, or bother to get undressed or take off my shoes, just laid down on top of the hotel bed went straight to sleep.
Woke up the next morning and sat up looking at my ring finger now minus a wedding band. I saw a glint of light on the desk by the window on the far side of the room. I'd been so tired the night before I hadn't even closed the curtains so the sunlight was pouring in. I got up and walked over to the desk to see what it was. It was my wedding ring sitting by itself on the desktop. I must have stared at it for a solid minute trying to work out how it got there. I didn't have it when I came into the room and I up until that minute hadn't even been on that side of the room. Still can't explain how it got there.
I was sleeping on my night shift break when I heard muffled cries. Then the clock flew off the wall and shattered into a million pieces right beside me. Then something touched my hair. I no longer work night shift on that unit.
One morning I met a couple on the east side of the state in City A. It was a holiday. They were from City B in the middle of the state, and I lived in City C on the west side. We were all visiting a landmark that day. At the time we did not discuss any of these details about where we were visiting from.
Several hours later, I was back in City C, about to have the holiday menu at a local restaurant, and I look up and there's that same couple, also about to eat.
Totally by chance, we had made reservations for the same time at the same restaurant, days/weeks ahead of time, left the same landmark on the other side of the state around the same time, and drove 250 miles to eat at the same restaurant.
What do you do in that situation? Probably shouldn't go up and say hello, or else you'd be labeled as a stalker or something lol.
At friends house. Friend was in garage working on dirt bike. Driveway empty because parents left a while ago. Go inside to grab a soda but decide to look for his cat. Who I haven't seen all day. I walk into the office and as Im calling her name, a deep man's voice goes "Meow" right into my right ear. I jump and run around the main floor looking for who said that. Didn't find anyone.
I once shut my ear in a car door. No idea how, have tried to recreate it and can’t, but my god that hurt!
When I was a kid I was tent camping in my friend's yard. The outside lights were shining on the one wall of the tent. I was talking to my friend and I swear to this day I saw the shadow of a man walk by but the light shown through his eyes and mouth as if they were transparent. Kind of like if you held a mask up to a light. I jumped at yelled what was that? My friend sees the shadow and unzips the tent to look but no one was there. It was too fast for someone to get away even running.
We walked around the yard and house with flashlights but never found anything. That was over 40 years ago and I can still replay that sight in my mind as if it just happened.
The father is still giggling to this day, or rolling around in his grave lol
My GF at the time (late 90's) had her grandfather pass away. I was on the other side of the country, never met her grandparents.
I was walking and talking with a friend when I stopped and knew something was wrong, but not exactly what. He even saw the look on my face and asked me what was wrong. A conversation later and I stopped the time her grandfather passed.
No idea how I felt that but I'll die an honest man, swearing it's a true story.
I had just gotten married. My buddy was driving me home from work. Outside my house he asked if he could try on my wedding band. I handed it to him and he dropped it, in the car with the door closed. We searched the car for over two hours and never found it.
I saw a glowing magenta orb about 5 feet off the ground. I drove past it then drove back to see it again and it was gone. Really weird.
Woke up one night to a loud CRACK sound. Spouse and I creep out of the bedroom to see the railing of the stairs fell. The apparently brass or otherwise metal attachment on the top of the stairs holding it to the wall looked like it had been cut through or something. Idk how it happened, but we just got a new railing. Never saw anything like that before or since. And like, yes the stairs are inside the house. Idk what would cause that to happen, it was loud as f**k.
I shared a room with my sister when we were teenagers. I never touched her alarm clock as she would just get weird about it. I was up early one morning as my mother and I had to be somewhere. For some weird reason I had the urge to turn off her alarm so I did. She missed her train to work - the train she normally took was the one that hit the rail bridge and became the Granville Train Disaster in Australia in 1977. No idea what prompted me.
I remember my parents talking about that probably a day or two later, I was 8.
Load More Replies...august 2001, my oldest brother un expectedly died in his sleep. i had not spoken to him for a year due to family issues. night before his funeral, i was sitting on the floor of our bedroom, wife is on our bed. i was crying into her stomach, upset, her arms were under my arms, holding me. after few minutes, i feel a tap on my right shoulder, her arms still around me and then, "maj, it's alright." i look up and my wife's eyes were wide! her- did you hear that?" me- " what did you hear?" her- "i heard your brother rupe say, "maj, it's alright."
I saw my elderly Mom on Xmas one year. She was slowly failing, but had been for a few years. On New Year's Eve, I was in the bathroom and I just sort of "heard" my Mom say that she was tired. She had held on an extra 6 months for the family, drawing strength from one of us. But she was tired now and it was her time to go. I didn't hear it like a hallucination. It wasn't a daydream. It was almost like remembering something in your head that you just heard. Very real. The next day I got a call that she was in the ICU. She never went home - died about 11 days later. I have never seen a ghost or anything like that. I'm a very unimaginative person. I think this was real.
I shared a room with my sister when we were teenagers. I never touched her alarm clock as she would just get weird about it. I was up early one morning as my mother and I had to be somewhere. For some weird reason I had the urge to turn off her alarm so I did. She missed her train to work - the train she normally took was the one that hit the rail bridge and became the Granville Train Disaster in Australia in 1977. No idea what prompted me.
I remember my parents talking about that probably a day or two later, I was 8.
Load More Replies...august 2001, my oldest brother un expectedly died in his sleep. i had not spoken to him for a year due to family issues. night before his funeral, i was sitting on the floor of our bedroom, wife is on our bed. i was crying into her stomach, upset, her arms were under my arms, holding me. after few minutes, i feel a tap on my right shoulder, her arms still around me and then, "maj, it's alright." i look up and my wife's eyes were wide! her- did you hear that?" me- " what did you hear?" her- "i heard your brother rupe say, "maj, it's alright."
I saw my elderly Mom on Xmas one year. She was slowly failing, but had been for a few years. On New Year's Eve, I was in the bathroom and I just sort of "heard" my Mom say that she was tired. She had held on an extra 6 months for the family, drawing strength from one of us. But she was tired now and it was her time to go. I didn't hear it like a hallucination. It wasn't a daydream. It was almost like remembering something in your head that you just heard. Very real. The next day I got a call that she was in the ICU. She never went home - died about 11 days later. I have never seen a ghost or anything like that. I'm a very unimaginative person. I think this was real.