13 Former Ghost Skeptics Share the Paranormal Experiences That Made Them Believers

I'm what you might call a ghost agnostic. For the most part, I don't really believe in the paranormal, but then again, I have had a few experiences that have made me waver in that belief. But I fully acknowledge that I could one day have an encounter that changes everything I think I know — like these 13 people.

They went from skeptics to full-on believers after having some truly eerie first-hand experiences with the unexplained. Here are the seemingly paranormal events that have made people certain ghosts are real.

While she doesn't quite believe with 100 percent certainty in ghosts, MrsMellowCake had an experience at 5 years old that would definitely have shaped my beliefs about the paranormal. She recalls waking up in the night to see her grandmother "standing at the end of my bed, wearing a teal blue skirt and a matching blouse," and putting her finger to her lips as if telling her to keep quiet, and then, when the young girl rubbed her eyes, grandma was gone. 

The next morning, she found her mother crying and learned grandma had died of a sudden brain hemorrhage, 60 miles away, on her way back home from an evening playing bingo. She had on the same outfit MrsMellowCake saw, and collapsed around the same time she saw her standing at the foot of the bed.

A user with the name leechladyland had one of the eeriest unexplained events I've ever heard, but it's more comforting than scary. They said one day they went to therapy and had one of the best sessions of their life, but the therapist seemed to be acting strangely at the start of the session. Afterward, "leechlady" asked why the therapist had been weird before. "He said when I walked in I was accompanied by a warrior-like person," they recalled. "He said he had the overwhelming feeling to perform as best he professionally could that day, and that he got the sense this 'warrior' had fought a lot of battles to protect me."

When the therapist described the man he saw, the description matched that of her brother, who passed away at 14. And before you write off the therapist as a kook, it turns out he wasn't the only person to witness this protector. A decade later, they got to be friends with a neighbor who once asked, "do you know there is a soldier who follows you around?” He described the same figure the therapist saw.

As a teen working at a recreation center where kids often hosted their birthday parties, mushroom_gorge says one of the kids pointed up at the ceiling and said there was a little boy there. Then, later, two little girls who hadn't been there for the first kid's sighting said they saw the same thing — a little boy up on the ceiling. And then it happened again with another little boy pointing at the ceiling and saying, ""Hey, there's a little boy up there!"

The next day, while the play area was empty, people saw a swing with nobody in it, going back and forth. "I like to think that the ghost was truly a little boy who just wanted to play, and he finally got to go on the swing," they mused.

Poor longfacepug became a believer, weirdly, while fooling around with his girlfriend. She kept a little urn with some of her grandfather's ashes on a shelf next to a heavy angel statuette. One day, while he and his girlfriend were being, um, frisky, they both heard a grunt and witnessed the angel statuette not just falling from the shelf but seemingly hurtled to the ground like someone had thrown it. "Now when I say this thing FLEW off the wall, I’m talking 7-8 feet of air before landing on the hard wood and leaving a dent where the wing hit," he wrote. "Even if this thing had fell off the wall, it would’ve dropped straight down, not soared with force." Both of them heard the grunt.

Later that night, they told the story at dinner with his girlfriend's family, keeping the story PG for her parents' sake. And then her sister burst into tears, saying she had seen a dark figure at the foot of her bed for days but didn't say anything because she didn't want to upset or alarm anyone.

ThatThreesome has a terrifying tale that all started with a nasty bout of insomnia as a child. They struggled with sleep for years as a kid and finally they were taken to see a neurologist for a sleep study. But in speaking with the doctor about what they were experiencing at night, their mom realized they'd been having the same experience in the night — a dark figure on or by the bed, shapes moving around the room. Turns out their brother had also been seeing the figure at night, too. 

"It was then I realized we must have paranormal activity and I've believed it ever since," they said. And it seems to have been concentrated in that particular home. "When we moved out of that house all my sleep issues abruptly stopped and I haven't experienced it since."

User rperez746's grandmother lived them them for several years until she passed away. She lived in the bedroom next door, but they shared a bathroom that was in perez's room, which she would often get up to user in the middle of the night. "There is a drop from her room to mine so we put a night light outside the bathroom so she could see the way," they said. A few days after she passed, they were up late reading and saw both the family pets staring at the night light. 

"My cat got up and went to the light, pawing at it and making nosies. My dog just stayed still, not barking. I would grab him so he would calm down or go to sleep but he never took his eyes off that spot." Then they saw "what I can only say looked like light [bending] around the night light. I was positive it was my grandma coming back to use the bathroom and or check on me and the house." Though they haven't experienced her presence this way since, they still leave the night light on for grandma.

MiiiisTaaaaaaaAAAA and her husband were having trouble with making ends meet around the time when her grandma passed away. Her abuela kept appearing to her in her dreams for days after the funeral, saying if she needed money to look under her mattress, where she would find $1,500 in Mexican pesos. After having the dream several times, she looked and found, you guessed it, $1,500 in Mexican pesos under the mattress. After taking the money, her grandma did not appear in her dreams anymore.

Not all believers are made at home — banwagl's stay at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado made them believe in ghosts. The historic resort is notoriously haunted and actually served as the inspiration for The Shining. During their stay, they heard children playing and laughing in the hall in the middle of the night, but when they opened the door "to see what the hell was going on," no one was there. They thought the kids had just been too fast, but then they took a tour of the building the next day. 

The guide "stopped directly in front of our room to tell us the story of young girls whose ghosts can be heard running up and down that same hallway," they said. While the skeptic in me would argue the hotel staff had a hand in those noises to keep up the hotel's reputation, I fully admit this would probably make me a believer if I'd been there.

Though they come from a whole family of believers in the supernatural, dailydonuts16 never believed until one day while dog-sitting for an aunt. While watching a movie late at night, the dog "starts barking like crazy and runs up the stairs at full speed. The dog was small, but fierce." Then they heard "a gravelly voice at the top of the stairs say 'Bad doggie.'"

They went up the stairs to investigate. "That's when I heard footsteps walking away from us down the hall and into my aunt's bedroom. I could hear the footsteps, but I couldn't see anybody making them." That was enough for this former skeptic, who took the dog and slept in their car for the night. Good call.

Seeing isn't always believing, but it helps if someone sees the same thing as you. Cubic_Ant probably would have thought their paranormal encounter was just a dream, but for the fact their parents witnessed it, too. The three of them were on the couch watching a movie and the poster says they had been drifting off to sleep when they caught a glimpse of a little boy barreling toward them.  "I immediately sat up and braced for impact," they said. However, all three of them jolted at the same time. 

"Before I could explain, my dad told me he saw a boy running towards us. His description of the boy matched mine while my mother confirmed as well."

Maizymo3 worked as a housekeeper in a nursing home and during an early morning shift passed by the room of a lady she often stopped to look in on since she was usually up at that time."One morning I went in to say hi and she looked so beautiful," she recalled. "She smiled and waved at me. It was like she was glowing. Her hair looked amazingly white and she had on a pink sweater. She radiated light." She went on with her work and during her coffee break she spoke with a coworker who informed her they had a fill room cleaning to do because a resident had passed away that night. "You guessed it," they wrote. It was the lady with the pink sweater.

"I never ever forgot how beautiful she looked at 4 am."

Junglalo's brother learned while looking through family photos that his imaginary playmate was not so imaginary. "He pointed to one of my grandfather and said, 'That's my friend Tom! He plays pretend with me!'" It was the first time he'd seen their grandfather, who had passed away long before either of them was born. And yes, the grandfather's name was indeed Tom.

While scrodytheroadie hasn't seen a ghost, he and his wife believes their daughter must have a keen connection to the spirit world after a few eerie events. The first was her telling them she talked to "Nana," which is what he called his late grandmother, and his daughter was able to point her out in a group photo. Coincidental, perhaps, but it gets weirder. His wife got pregnant again and their daughter seemed to know it before they did. Unfortunately, his wife miscarried, and while he acknowledges it's possible their daughter picked up on their sadness, it's pretty spooky that a few days later she put her head on mom's stomach and said, "there's no baby in there anymore."

Fast-forward several months, and their daughter says, "I was talking to my brother last night and he said that my sister is coming to live with me soon." This was a confusing thing for an only child to say, and though they were trying again, they had not taken a test yet. "We picked one up that night, and sure enough, pregnant. When time came to reveal the gender, I wasn't even interested. My daughter had already said it was a girl. Sure enough, I have two daughters."