Doubling down on the spooky posting. Also please check the high strangeness thread on c/main for even weirder shit. Anyways, what’s the creepiest thing you’ve experienced, real or paranormal.
Holy shit thatd terrify me
I'm glad to hear you're doing better mentally, comrad
my symptoms have almost entirely on a way.
That is some good fucking news.
When I was little, probably about three or four, my brother locked me in our attic. I had been looking for my dad and gotten told he was up there fixing something. After I banged on the door for a few minutes, I decided to make the best of it and spent about three hours locked up there playing with some old toys. The first hour was uneventful, but starting around hour two was when things got weird. I heard creaking sounds from the other end of the attic, but didn't pay them much attention at first. That was until they started to get even louder and drew my attention to a peculiar piece of furniture.
There was an old armoire up there had been there since we moved in and had always given me the heebie-jeebies. As I was playing, I could have sworn that the damn thing starting openly very slowly. Just enough to be noticeable, but not fast enough to make any noise. I just sat there for a few minutes watching the door move just getting more and more freaked out. And that's when I saw the hand.
It was a god-damned, honest to goodness human hand just stretching out from inside the armoire.
I freaked out, bolted down the small staircase and started slamming into the door with every bit of strength I could muster. I heard footsteps on the creaky attic floor above me, heading towards the staircase behind me. The sounds were nearly to the top of the stairs when the door finally swung open.
It was my dad, who had just finished yelling at my brother for locking me in the attic. He saw how freaked out I was and asked me what had happened. I told him all about the hand coming out of the armoire and the footsteps. He went up into the attic and, aside from the toys I was playing with, everything was fine.
At the time, I thought it was the Cucuy (which is a bogeyman that Latinx cultures love to fuck their kids up with), but I have gotten older, I chalk it more up to a mixture of nerves and maybe a stray raccoon. Either way, just about the scariest thing to ever happen to me.
Zero paranormal story, but still an episode where I got creeped out: I got a call from a super drunk friend who was too far from his apartment to walk home so he asked if he could crash at my place because I was closer to the core of bars in our old hometown. I agree but I was also pissed off he interrupted my movie so I went out to get him rather than just wait for a knock. I go out to meet him and he's drunk walking like an idiot and there's a guy across the street, walking sober, but at the same pace as my friend. There was another man walking behind him about 30 feet, likewise at the same pace. It was a setup for a mugging and I had managed to show up just at the right time to make them abandon their plans. The guy on our side of the street pretended to walk ahead then I caught a glimpse of him jogging across the street to join his partner before they both cut off on a side street. The rest of the walk home was pretty tense. Nothing came of it, but hey, I was pretty creeped out for the rest of the night.
Yeah once I got close to him I loudly greeted him and gave him a bear hug and whispered that I thought he was being followed and he was like "yeah I kinda felt like I was"
I was roofied in a bar when I was in my early 20s.
One moment I was drinking soda (sober driver) and talking to my roommate about setting up a larger compost system in our backyard
and BOOM
next thing I know I wake up slumped under a tree about 15 miles outside of town.
Literally no memories of that time period. Even the parts of the day after waking up are spotty. Sorta glad though. Shit was fucked.
I managed to hitch a ride back to my neighborhood to find one of my roommates had roped his entire engineering fraternity into forming a search party. Apparently when they went to file a missing persons report with the police the officer on duty told them it wasn't uncommon for young people to hook up at a bar without telling friends -- and that they could only file a report after 24 hours. So. ACAB.
Holy fuck that’s wild. I’m sorry that happened to you
Also good on your roommate for throwing together a posse to come look for you
I’m sorry that happened to you. My friend was roofied a couple years ago. His friends formed a search party, too. The cops were also worthless. ACAB.
Nah, we're pretty sure my roommate was also dosed -- but he was *also * super drunk and wound up passed out at a mutual friend's apartment down the block when he couldn't find me for a ride home. He was the one who called my other roommates in the morning saying I was missing -- hence the search party. We both ended up in therapy afterwards -- he felt pretty guilty even though he can't remember that night either.
Did that happen in, like, a party? I'm just a little confused and a bit scared how that could come about...
Used to live in the place that was previously the slave quarters + cow milking area of some big old house. Heard loads of clunking around upstairs and shouting and stuff. We all used to joke about how the place is haunted.
Turns out it was just a guy attempting suicide.
Thanks for the share, it was a great read.
The last classes I took were in religion science and what you described sounded a lot like the theory around initiation rites - fascinating.
Once again, thanks for the story.
Huuuh, yeah sûre! Gimme a moment, since all my classes were in french - I'll try to get some english sources.
All right, so – disclaimer first: Pretty much all of the science of religions basics are made by a known fascist: Mircea Eliade, much to my chagrin.
I’ll do my best to summarize and maybe it’s going to be a wall of text, but writing it down makes me remember my eternal hate/love with my academic studies – also English is not my first language, so some wordings may be off – feel free to ask to clarify some stuff or point some “errors” so that I may learn more.
Basics
To begin, as with all occidental cosmologies, religion is subscribed in a binary system. There is the Cosmos aka “Secular World” (reality) and Chaos aka “Sacred World” (metaphysic). Since life is chaos, we seek to make order into it – to organize it so that we may feel more secure against all ailments that life throws at us. Since we don’t know the source of the chaos, chaos may be a lot of things – mysterious, immaterial, odd, but at the very least – it is very powerful. Because it can make life or death, it can destroy us as easily – it’s beyond what we can understand and it commands respect. Everything is binary, according to that Romanian fascist, so the Sacred world is fascinating and terrifying, light and darkness, life and death, etc. It gives “colors” to the Secular world, or else everything lose substance and dies by boredom, so to speak. Society need the Sacred to spice things up, to reach for its glory, to master its powers.
Spiritual organization is born in response to it, it beckons precise movements, or speech, that mimics the very first time chaos was “touched” without destroying the folks seeking it. Rites mimics the myths – and it makes a great glue for social order. By making the rites, you make the same as your ancestors did and the same that your children will do.
But, back to the core:
Rite of passage
So, as we know, rite of passage is to make a transition from a before state to an after state. In a religious analysis, initiates are all individuals with their own social characteristics (class, gender, clan, age, etc.) that must do some kind of ceremony to get to another level – being transformed along the way. To make the transformation, you have to go to the sacred world and do the ritual to absorb in a “safe way” the all mighty energy of chaos, while in that transition zone every initiatives is stripped from differentiations. In a nutshell, from the secular to the sacred back to the secular with a new status, from the cosmos to the chaos back to the cosmos.
I really hope that it’s okay to read until now.
Let’s get to your story. I'll say you and we, and I'm kind of assuming what was your experience, but it's easier for me to do so - feel free to point out some errors on it. I don't want to strip you of your agentivité.
First of all, you’re on a trip to a land that is not your regular/secular world – there is a certain kind of awe, but mostly you are in regular terrain, the world is “organized” – or Cosmos, but at the same time this trip is giving quite a lot of energy, or at least some kind of renewal, or maybe not but I’ll not get into the meta of “the trip is on itself a rite of passage” (dear god I can get soooo dispersed). I guess that your choice of destination, the Mt. Inari, makes you a little more fecund to feeling a religious/spiritual experience. A mountain is, on itself, an already powerful symbol and you choose to get to it, in a fashioned way – with the official path which is paved and illuminated. The path is the secular: the shapes are clear, nothing morphs right before your eyes, everything is set, other people are on it – this is a known world. But then, there is the off-path, which is overgrown, dark, unknown. You have to use a tool (your cellphone light) to try and see where you’re going; to try and organize what is chaos, and even then it is limited – what this beyond the reach of the light? What’s that noise next to me? You have entered the sacred world. It is fascinating, but at the same time dangerous. You thread carefully, doing your own rituals to try and control it by paying your respects before venturing forth. The exploration of the ruin if kind of the apex of the rite. Everything is more chaos, labyrinth, now even the human construction loose consistency – it is covered with vines, plants, which moves with the wind, kind of amorphous. The sacred corrupts the secular, you are in its vicinity. As I’ve said earlier, sacred is kind of scary and fascinating, it may bring power, or can destroy – as it tried making you trip.
On a side note, there is also a concept of Hierophany – the manifestation of the sacred in a tangible secular event, or object, etc. I think the black cat is that kind of symbol.
You came back, make some kind of rituals to try and bind the sacred to the sacred world, because it is dangerous the merge the sacred and the secular. You came back with something more, a belief – at the very least an experience, which “changed” you before the event. It leaves some kind of stain; I guess it left you more connected with the folklore of japan/its people. So the rite of passage did what it had to do.
Okay, I really hope it was clear. Bear in mind that this analysis is really based in occidental cosmology, with a binary thought. And also, really don’t hesitate to ask questions or clarification. Pretty much was grabbed from my notebook with some wordreference for translation of specific terms. I read a lot in English, but don’t get to write or speak in it very often.
Once again, thanks for the share and also I’m glad to share that info with you, I’ve canceled a plan with university this fall and that kind of exercise makes me reconnect with something I liked to do.
Those vivid dreams where you can actually feel the bullet slam into your head so hard you have waves of sensation where it hit as you’re jolted awake.
ahhh these are the stories that get me. the idea that an act of evil heinous enough will leave a mark on space itself, one that can never be erased... chilling
Not trying to hate, but do y’all actually believe in paranormal/mystical shit? I feel like my lack of belief was a pretty big factor in leading me to leftism. Idk whether that’s a common correlation or just me personally
I've long considered myself a staunch atheist, but damn if I don't feel like there's unexplainable phenomena in our universe. I don't think I really buy into the idea of like a god or an afterlife at all, but I feel like there's disturbances in our reality that don't fit neatly into the "logic and science" way our world operates today.
I like that explanation but it doesn't really cover the cases where multiple people see something paranormal simultaneously, unless those monkey brain parts are shared very accurately it seems implausible for multiple people to have the same illusion at once.
What kind of stuff? I don’t necessarily disagree but I tend to think it’s mainly just things we haven’t discovered an explanation for yet
well according to science 24% of the universe is dark matter and 73% is dark energy, add that together you get 97% of the mass energy of the universe is "dark," i.e. we know nothing about it except that it exists. People usually think of dark matter as something that exists way out in the vacuum of space, but we may interact with it every day without realizing.
Anyway it's crazy to think the entire universe can be explained based on the 3% we have (partly) measured and documented
just speaking for myself, i don't not believe in it. it's mostly an unsettled question for me, and one that, regardless of the answer, doesn't affect my leftism in the slightest. i do think quite a few things fall through the cracks in science, and there's just too many stories dating back since forever for me to completely dismiss it. basically a big shrug from me lol
yeah that's the worst part... there's a twisted logic to it, kids being so innocent and openminded. but totally unfair and makes it scarier
and thanks! i'll definitely check it out... maybeee once it's daylight outside haha :comfy:
I used to do a tons of designer drugs to deal with a death in my life and I would do them on a nightly basis. Go to work at 7, come back at 3, eat dinner, workout, and then get fucked at 6 till I went to sleep at 3 in the morning and do the whole routine over. I would do this like 5 days a week and it was all fine until I started getting drug indused psychosis during work when I was not even high. It would mostly be shadow people at first or stuff moving at the peripherals of my vision but it eventually got to where I would see people who died, which is why I kept doing it so often. I would also see beings around the place and I hear stuff. All these later still kinda convinced there is an alternative dimension living congruently with ours but we just can't see it.
The scariest thing I saw during that time was the ceiling was made out of dead bodies and heads would pop out of it to talk to me.
I eventually stopped doing those drugs after I tried to cut my female friends hand off and I think I wanted to split her throat but the memory gets blurry
Sleep paralysis. I knew what it was so that helped. If I didn't I probably would have thought I saw a ghost. The ghost stories I heard from family and friends were probably all sleep paralysis as well.
Sleep paralysis is horrible. I used to get it as a kid, and I just remember lying there trying to scream but no sound would come out my mouth.
I’m glad I didn’t get it until I was an adult. Didn’t know what it was at first just thought it was an incredibly fucked up dream
I'm so glad I knew what it was too otherwise I'd be in fucking terror at the fact I was paralyzed by a pitch black humanoid.
Only happened once but I remember the feeling.
I've had sleep paralysis maybe a few dozen times but it's never been a horrifying experience like a lot of people describe. Usually i get an extremely loud roaring, staticy, crackling electricity sound that escalates and then dies down as i come out of it. One time i had a ten foot tall shadow figure at the foot of my bed, leaning all the way over almost peering straight down at me. It was startling but not scary. It felt like it was just curious and like it was startled as well that i had seen it. It slurped away toward the foot of my bed and disappeared like black liquid down a suddenly opened drain and that was that.
