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The original was posted on /r/paranormalencounters by /u/brownie-bean on 2024-09-02 18:19:49+00:00.

I want to start by saying that I really want to believe the things I’ve seen or experienced were just my mind playing tricks on me, but it’s happened too often for me to dismiss it entirely.

I was raised to believe that ghosts don’t exist, but I also grew up hearing ghostly experiences from the same people who told me that. So, I never truly dismissed the idea of ghosts. I just feel like we all share a space, and as long as we don’t bother each other, it’s fine.

That said, I want to share the first, very visible, paranormal encounter I had. It was March 2015, and I had just finished my finals that day. After returning from school, I took a nap, felt refreshed, and around 7 PM, there was a power cut. Power cuts are fairly common where I live, so I decided to pass the time by walking along the pathway leading to our garage, which was between our house and our garden. It was dark, but the moonlight provided enough visibility. I could see the road outside our property clearly, but where I was standing wasn’t visible to anyone passing by.

Like a typical teenager, I stood there listening to music, just doing random things. After a while, I was standing in front of the garage, facing the road, when I suddenly felt someone behind me. Before I could turn around, I sensed that this person was bending down towards my right side, and I could see a face behind my right elbow. I turned my head to look, and it was… me. I was staring at myself, but the other “me” had this huge grin that I’ll never forget. (Honestly, I’ve tried to mimic it in front of mirrors, but I physically can’t do it.)

I ran—or more like speed-walked—back into the house, unable to explain what I’d just seen. It was just me and my mother at home at the time, and it wasn’t even past 8 PM. When I told her what happened, she joked that it might be one of the guys who got murdered on our property in the 1940s. Apparently, our property used to be a well-known garden open to the public, and according to one of my grandfather’s friends, three murders had taken place in one day there, after which people stopped visiting the garden as much.

After this incident, there were other small occurrences that I ignored. At one point, I stayed in the house alone for as long as five months. Even during those months, I would experience things randomly. I felt taps on my shoulder, heard clapping, and once, I heard what sounded like whispers outside our living room window. That particular incident made me stay awake in the living room until dawn, fearing we were about to be robbed. I’m more scared of humans than ghostly beings.

These tiny occurrences didn’t really bother any of my family members, but then something happened in early 2023. My grandmother, who has dementia, had moved in with us. We always had someone attending to her so she wouldn’t wander off (which she had tried to do multiple times). Grandma had her own sofa in the living room, and she would only sit there. This sofa was visible from the dining room, which was connected to my room, so whenever I left my room, I would see her sitting on her sofa.

One evening, I decided to take a nap in my room while my mom sat with my grandma. It was just the three of us at home. It was around 4 PM, everything was fairly bright, but we still had our living room lights on. Instead of taking a nap I was scrolling through my phone with my headphones on when my mom suddenly came running into my room. She frantically said something that I couldn’t hear over my loud headphones. By the time I took them off, all I could hear was “help grandma,” and she ran out of my room toward the kitchen, trying to get to our backyard where my grandma was sitting on the floor. (For some reason, she would always sit on the floor, and she was heavy enough that only my dad or I could lift her up.)

So, I jumped out of bed and ran after my mom. But as I passed the living room, I saw my grandma sitting on the sofa. While running, I tried to ask my mom why she was heading to the backyard when grandma was in the living room. But before I could finish my sentence, I stepped outside into the backyard and saw my grandma sitting on the floor. I stood still for a few seconds, confused, as my mom struggled to lift her up. I eventually composed myself and helped her. That’s when I realized that the grandma who was sitting on the sofa was wearing a different dress.

I told my parents about this that very evening and also brought up what I had experienced back in 2015. That’s when my mom mentioned that she, too, had experienced some unexplainable things—nothing as visible as what I had seen, but she had felt things.

Since that day, the “activities” have become more common occurrences. The creepiest one for me was when I felt as if someone was climbing onto my bed while I was on it. My bed was creaking in the same way it does when someone climbs onto it. I thought it could be my breathing, so I held my breath for a good 20 seconds and stayed still. The bed was still creaking. I freaked out, jumped out of bed, and turned on the lights. But, as usual, there was nothing. When I got back into bed, the creaking stopped.

My parents are usually very dismissive of the idea of ghosts, but even they have sensed things they can’t explain. All we know is that whatever or whoever this might be, isn’t harmful. Still, I would like to believe that my mind is just making things up.