Texts From the Dead That'll Make Your Skin Crawl

With Halloween quickly approaching, we've been trying to keep you up to date on everything you need to know about the spooky holiday. We've shared controversial kid's costumes, questionable adult choices, and even debunked some of the most common superstitions (black cats, anyone?).

Today, we bring you an article that's not for the faint of heart, or for anyone not looking to get goosebumps.

See, grief is a powerful thing, and we're often longing to communicate with our deceased loved ones — until, that is — they send us an answer from beyond the grave.

Read on for people who got messages from the dead. This story is guaranteed to make your skin crawl.

Reddit user hollywoodpizzapirate periodically texts his dad when he's thinking of him. He'll send him a message on holidays, like this one he sent him on Father's Day. 

The crazy thing is, he actually received a response.

Taufeus shared his terrifying text message conversation with the reddit community, r/nosleep.

Taufeus worked at one of the most popular funeral homes in his city while putting himself through college. His job wasn't preparing the corpses for the funeral, but rather "working with the families of the deceased on planning the appropriate services for their loved ones," in his words.

One day, he welcomed a grieving mother and father in their mid-40s, who were inquiring about a service for their late son. According to Taufeus, "he had been in a nasty car accident on the highway. His name was Bobby and he was 19 at the time of his passing."

Taufeus took Bobby's parents on a tour of the funeral home while they talked about the kind of service they'd hold, and what kinds of objects the parents wanted buried with their son. "This isn’t an unusual thing, many people do this with deceased loved ones. When everything arrived it included a baseball cap, a sports team hoodie and his cell phone (turned off)," he wrote.

After his trying day at work, Taufeus went home, took a shower, and sat in front of the TV. At this point, his phone buzzed. 

I'll let him take it from there: 

My iPhone beeps a text notification... I was somewhat surprised this text came from a number not saved in my contacts list.

“HELLO.” It read.

A little weirded out I responded. “Hey there, who is this?”

I began heading to my bedroom and shut the door. Turned the TV on and got into bed. I usually would watch a bit of TV before falling asleep. My phone beeps again.

“BOBBY...” It said.

“Bobby who?” I asked, I hadn’t ever known anyone by the name.

“YOU KNOW WHO I AM, YOU MET MY PARENTS TODAY.”

I got a bit dizzy as I read it. Along with a rock settling in my stomach. “There’s no way this is that kid.” I thought to myself.

I responded, 'This isn’t funny, what happened to him was horrible and no one should be joking around like this.'

The number responded 'SHUT YOUR ROTTEN MOUTH YOU LET THEM RUIN MY FUNERAL RUIN IT!!!!! IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU IN THE CAR ACCIDENT NOT ME. YOU’LL HAVE AN EARLY GRAVE TOO IF IT GOES MY WAY!'

Absolutely unsurprisingly, Taufeus quit his job at the funeral home shortly after this event. But not before some other crazy antics went down with Bobby. Read the whole story here.

A family who buried their elderly grandmother with her phone (I guess this is more common of a practice than I would have expected) got a message from their beloved, seemingly from beyond the grave.

According to The Independent, Lesley Emerson was a 'prolific texter' up until she lost her battle with cancer at age 59, which prompted the family to bury their beloved with her favorite device.

Her granddaughter, Sherri, had been texting her deceased grandmother intermittently since her passing as a way to cope. "Obviously we know that Nan wasn’t going to ever reply, it was just something we did as a comfort for ourselves because she loved to text,” she explained.

One day, after Sherri sent her grandmother her usual greeting, she got a message back. It read,"I’m watching over you, you’ll get through this, you’ll be alright."

The terrified granddaughter doubled down, this time asking who she was texting. Then she received another reply: "I’m watching over you and it’s all going to get better. Just push through."

To make matters scarier, the family had already been in touch with their service provider, O2, who assured them that their grandmother's phone number would be promptly disconnected after her passing and would never be used again.

AHHH!!

In one of the most chilling text conversations of all time, CR_Jones hit up his best friend Mario to make plans about seeing the IT movie that was going to be released in September.

Mid-conversation, things start to devolve:

Me: (Talking about plans to go see IT) Yeah I guess we’ll just see who can drive that Friday whenever we meet up. We’ll just play it by ear.

Mario: Stopp touchhingg the therrmostat its soooo coold in here

Me: What?

Mario: I’mmm soo coldd

Me: What is this? What are you talking about?

Mario: Theee thermmostat stooopp touccching itt

Me: How could I possibly be touching your thermostat right now?

Me: Are you drunk or something? Why do you keep texting like that?

There was about a twenty minute pause here before he texted me back.

Mario: SOoo CoLDdd

Me: You’re starting to freak me out Mar. What is this about?

I try calling him but he doesn’t answer.

Me: Mar can you answer your phone please

Mario: Whehere arre the ligghhhts

Me: Dude, seriously what the f--k are you talking about?

Mario: It’ss soOO DarRKKkkK

I try calling him again. Nothing.

Me: ANSWER YOUR PHONE F--K FACE!!!!

Me: I’m going to kill you if this is a joke you’re genuinely starting to freak me out.

There was another long pause here before I finally started texting him again.

Me: Mar?

Me: Are you still there dude?

Me: ????

I try another call, still nothing.

Me: ANSWER YOUR F--KING PHONE!!!

Mario: ITt’sS soOooO COcold here

Mario: SOoo Cooldd

Mario: sOofd COoolddsa

Mario: Sosofo coOOLsd

Me: Please stop this

Mario: sosfOFJl coLODOJ

Mario: SooJDOK COlLDLOhfa

"The rest of his texts after this are just nothing but gibberish. He would send me a new one about every five minutes and continued to do so well into the night. I continually told him to stop whatever it was that he was doing and tried calling him several more times, but nothing was working," CR Jones explained. 

After a while, he put his phone on silent, figuring that Mario would get bored of this prank once he realized he wouldn't be getting a response.

The next day, he woke up to hundreds more messages from Mario. "Most of them were just lines and lines of the same s--t that he was texting me earlier. Nothing but gibberish. Nearly 112 messages of it ... I sent him a text a little after waking up to see whether or not he was done with his bulls--t."

After Mario failed to respond to this text, CR Jones received a visit from two police officers later that afternoon asking if he'd been in contact with his friend, as he'd been missing since 4 p.m. the previous day.

He continues, "I invited them inside and showed them my phone. They examined the text messages together for a very long time whispering things back and forth to each other before finally turning to me. They told me that the time stamps on the messages didn’t make any sense. I asked them what they were talking about and they said that Mario had left his phone behind whenever he had gone missing. There was no way that he could have sent those texts because he didn’t have his phone with him.

"I felt my entire body stiffen and go cold."

If you're thinking this story can't possibly get any creepier, I assure you, it does. Read the full story here.

Were these text messages not scary enough for you? 

Though we aimed to pick the most goosebump-enducing ones, honorable mentions go to 1) the guy who received terrifying Facebook messages from his dead girlfriend 2) this kid who was texting his best friend who he didn't know had died and 3) this person who got a phone call from his dead sister that caused him to question whether she really killed herself.