Have you ever been haunted? Seen a shadow in a dark corner of your room? Felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?

We’re sharing eight chilling encounters Spirit Halloween employees have experienced. Read on to learn about their real life ghost stories – if you dare! You don’t have to wait until National Paranormal Day on May 3rd to enjoy these haunting stories.

1. Haunted by Aunt Caroline

“As a kid I was afraid of everything – don’t even get me started on the years I was convinced Pennywise would come up out of my shower drain. When I was actually faced with the real thing at the age of 8, however, I was completely calm. At a routine sleepover at my aunt’s house I was sleeping in the lacy daybed she adorned with toys and dolls for me. Around 3 am (yes, witching hour) I woke with a start and noticed a shadow cast on the wall in front of me. A silhouette of a woman in a nightgown with long hair appeared to be bending over as if to light a candle. ‘Aunt Caroline,’ I said, ‘what are you doing?’ My aunt answered from her room just next door asking me if I was ok. With that, the shadow vanished and the room was black again. Calmly I explained to her what happened and the woman, who actually loves all things horror, freaked out and called her own mom (my grandmother) to come to pick me up. It is one of my clearest memories. I have never questioned the existence of ghosts and never will.” – Alex M.

2. The Curious Case of Barbara

“I have a little ghost girl in my house named Barbara. Sometimes, she turns the radio on when my niece is dancing and, once she stops, Barbara turns the music off until she dances again. She must like my niece because one day after she had woken up, my niece came into the other room and told us that someone said good morning to her, but nobody else had been in the room.

Barbara also communicated with me and some of my friends when I was little. We were playing outside and two of the girls decided to go back inside of the house. Once they returned, they said that they had seen someone wearing all white float past them.” – Sarah S.

3. The Playful Prankster

“As a kid, my step-sister always told me that there was a little girl who’d run around in the attic and keep her up at night. She said the girl would also come to her bedside and ask her to play. I always thought she was pulling my leg. It wasn’t until years later that I finally believed her.

The first summer after all of my siblings moved out, I spent a lot of days at home alone. Whenever I would shower, I would hear the bathroom door creak open, and I would peek out of the curtain and the door would be open but no one would be there. I’d close the curtain again and all of the cabinet doors would suddenly start BANGING. I would open the curtain and the cabinet doors would be open, but again, no one was there. After this happened to me on several occasions, I was convinced my dad’s house was haunted. I still don’t like being there alone, even as an adult!” – Jacki D.

4. Uncle Jimmy

“In 2017, my family purchased a house which was built by a retired man who people referred to as ‘Uncle Jimmy.’ He had died in the house of natural causes. After living in the house for a few days, we noticed that a couple of doors would sometimes slowly swing open. The house also had an intercom system which was connected to an in-wall stereo. One day while in the bedroom, I heard classical music playing. I had hooked up our wireless speakers earlier in the week and thought maybe my wife had turned on some music. She hadn’t, and the music turned out to be playing through the in-wall speaker in the bedroom. We figured it was Uncle Jimmy wanting to play some music for us.

Over the next few weeks, the in-wall radio would start to play classical and jazz music at various times in different rooms and sometimes even in multiple ones. One evening, I had an indie rock playlist playing on our wireless system and it promptly turned off. A few minutes later, classical music started playing through the in-wall system. Evidently, Uncle Jimmy didn’t like my taste in music.

One morning, the radio in the bedroom came on at 6 a.m. and a story started playing about National Science Day. This was odd since, in the past, the radio had only played music and had never come on early in the morning. I turned the wall speaker off as the DJs were talking about NASA. Then I remembered that Uncle Jimmy retired from NASA a few years before he built our house. We really think he was trying to get us to appreciate his love of science.” – Greg S.

5. The Shrieking Ghost in the Night

“Since I was young, I’ve experienced sleep paralysis and have seen things while I slept. Usually these occurrences aren’t particularly scary, but one incident has stuck with me for years. I was asleep in my childhood bedroom, when suddenly, I woke up and realized I was experiencing sleep paralysis. I was unable to move my body and could only dart my eyes around the room. My heart began to race when I saw a figure standing in the corner of the dark room, behind my bedroom door. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that it was the silhouette of a gaunt woman. Her frame towered over me, and black hair draped over her face. To my horror, she turned toward me and slowly began trudging toward my bed.

As she stood at the foot of my bed and peered over me, I tried with all my might to break out of the sleep paralysis, but I still couldn’t move. Slowly, she leaned over my bed, steadying herself with her long, pale fingers. When her face was inches from mine, she opened her mouth to reveal rows of ghastly, yellow teeth and began to let out an unearthly shriek. Thankfully, I was able to break out of the spell of the sleep paralysis and turned on my bedside lamp, at which point, she was gone. I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

Now, of course, this may have been the work of a child’s overactive imagination playing tricks in the dark of the night. But to this day, it’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.” –Alex V.

6. Dorothy’s Teddy Bear

“My friends and I used to go ghost hunting every weekend. We read about this cemetery in a nearby town where a little girl was buried. She had passed away at a young age and the cemetery was said to be haunted by her. So, we went a few times and saw nothing. The third time we went back, we brought a teddy bear and a squeaky ball and put them on her grave. We left, and planned to go back the next night just like we had been doing. When we returned, both toys were gone. At first we were like ‘THIS IS SCARY!’ But in all reality, the ball could have blown away, or an animal could have taken it from the grave. So we hung out for a little bit and started to say, ‘Hey Dorothy, if you’re with us give us a sign.’ After saying it over and over and getting nothing, we were getting ready to leave. Before we walked out, I asked one more time, ‘Hey Dorothy, if you’re with us, give us a sign.’ And we heard the squeaky ball in the distance. It was honestly amazing, and not scary at all. It was just super cool to feel that connection. We also watched the footage from the camera we brought with us, and one of the first times we asked if she was with us, a very thick cloud of smoke came across the camera lens. When we paused the footage, the smoke looked like a little girl holding a teddy bear.” – Shawnee A.

7. “Everybody’s coming, Mommy!”

“I was walking back from the park with my toddler. It was getting dark and the street lights were coming on. All of a sudden my toddler was like, ‘Everybody’s coming!’ But nobody was behind us or in front of us. About 30 seconds later, my daughter said, ‘Everybody move!’ as if we were walking through a crowd. But we were the only ones there.” – Kelsie M.

8. 1971 Jane Doe

“My house was built in the 2000s so before that, nothing was there. It was just woods. Well, one night, after my husband had surgery, he slept on the couch in our playroom. Around 12:30 a.m., I woke up and he was standing at the edge of my bed holding his pillow and had looked like he just saw a ghost. I asked him what was wrong and he said, ‘Something just tried to suffocate me. A girl was sitting on my chest with her hands around my neck and I couldn’t breathe.’ He was terrified. Later on that night, he felt a cold hand on his shoulder. At breakfast the next morning, his daughter told him about this girl who sits on the edge of her bed and watches her sleep. He hadn’t told her about his encounter and asked her what the girl looked like. His daughter described a girl that closely resembled the ghost who had tried to suffocate him.” –  Tara S.

After hearing Tara’s story, her coworker, Lauren, decided to do her own research to uncover who the ghost might be.

“I was doing research to find out who she might be and I stumbled upon this article about three men who were hunting in the woods and found the body of a young girl in 1971. She had been strangled. Based on the coordinates of where these hunters were, they were basically on the street where Tara’s house is now. The case has never been solved.” – Lauren W.

Want more ghost stories? Read our New Year’s Eve ghost stories and the scariest true ghost stories on Reddit. Ready to go ghost hunting? Read about how to hunt the paranormal.

Do you have a creepy ghost story you’d like to share? Send us an email to Spiritblog@spirithalloween.com