One in five US adults claim to have seen a ghost, with 29% reporting being in touch with someone who’s died. The number of people who say they have felt in touch with someone who has died has grown by 11 percentage points since 1996. And the proportion of Americans who say they have “interacted” with a ghost has doubled since 1996, according to the same study.

Given it’s Halloween, we asked people to share their stories of other-worldly experiences. Here are nine of the best.

‘There is no other explanation for what happened’ – John Ward, Hartlepool

Back in 1997 my wife and I were working as relief management for a brewery. We would live and work in whichever pub we were sent to, usually covering holidays or filling gaps between tenants.



Whilst staying in one pub my wife and I noticed odd things happening. Walking into a room I would feel that something had moved, noises were heard. We both laughed this off at first. Beer taps would stop working, assuming the keg was empty I would head to the cellar to change the keg, only to find it was not empty and the gas had been shut off. Then also notice the mallet had vanished, only to find it on a shelf later.

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A few days later, after closing the pub. My wife was in the bar and I went to head upstairs. I heard footsteps and thinking a customer was still in the pub and in our private quarters. I unlocked the door and saw a man in brown trousers, with a cream striped shirt with sleeved rolled up. He was walking upstairs.

I shouted at him and followed after him. Reaching the top of the stairs I searched the rooms and there was nobody there. When I realised there was nobody else in the pub I felt immediately cold then a state of extreme nervousness for a while. Thinking about it now i can picture the scene perfectly and it makes me feel uncomfortable.

I later described him to regular customers of the pub, more than a couple told me it was an old Landlord from years ago, they even described the clothes he was wearing.

Most people I’ve told either laugh and say I imagined it. People who believe tend to then tell me about their experiences. On the whole I don’t tell people as it makes me feel silly at times. The experience changed me from being a complete skeptic to now being open minded. I still tell myself I do not believe in ghosts but I also think there is a lot that we do not understand about the world. There is no other explanation to what happened. I’ve thought about it for such a long time and came to the conclusion I saw a ghost.

‘It was an important moment for me when it happened and it still amazes me’

It was the Fall of 2009 in New York State on the property owned by my husband’s family. It had been his grandparents’ dairy farm and his Aunt continued to live on the property in a house she built in the 1970s. His grandparents’ home was just down the road but had been sold years earlier along with quite a bit of the land.

I woke up during the night because I felt like someone was staring at me, it was unsettling but not too scary. I looked out into the room from the bed and I saw a man who looked to be in his thirties or forties, in overalls and with thick black hair slicked back at the top. He was just standing there staring at me intently and I intuited that he was checking me out because he knew I would be the one to have a baby with his grandson.

A month or so later, I travelled to Maine with my husband to meet his parents for the first time. That first evening, his mother handed me a family album and the first photo was an 8x10 black and white of the man I saw that night standing in the room, and it was my mother-in-law’s father.

I felt a bit relieved that my experience was validated. I didn’t tell my future mother-in-law about it but I did tell my husband who neither negated my experience nor bought it wholesale. I enjoy sharing the story today as it was an important moment for me when it happened and still amazes me.



Since this experience in I have had one more run-in with this spirit in the same house. In 2015, I was sleeping in the same room when I was poked hard in the back waking me up. When I woke, I saw that my young daughter was about to fall off the bed and would have hit her head on the corner of a table. I believe he was looking out for us.

The few people I’ve told think it’s pretty amazing. I don’t tell a lot of people but the ones who know have never doubted my experience and are open to the idea of an afterlife.



‘I wonder if I dreamt it all but I know I was awake’ – Den Brimmell, Wolverhampton

It was 1976, and I was 13 years old. I was sleeping out in my back garden in an old four man scout tent with some school friends. I woke around 5am to find a young blonde boy had his head stuck through the door of the tent looking at me. It was early and I was tired, so I thought it was my brother who was blond but as he was only nine at the time he was sleeping in the house. Later that day, I asked my brother what he was doing up so early and he denied all knowledge and said he was in bed.

A week or so later, I was camping in the garden with my mates when I woke up early again and saw this blond child sitting cross-legged on my friends head who was fast asleep. Being a teenager, ignored it and went back to sleep! None of my friends ever mentioned anything strange to me, so I guess they never saw anything.

I pretty much forgot about it and never mentioned the second experience to anyone, until I was talking with my brother in the late 1980’s and, out of the blue, mentioned that he and his mates had camped out in the garden and one of them had asked him next morning who the blonde kid was who kept looking at them through the tent door and had been walking around the garden!

That tent had a loop and eyelet fastening for the door which meant that it was difficult to slide a hand in when it was shut from inside, let alone a head! I still live in the house but have not seen the blonde kid since.

I live in my parents old 2 bed semi, on a council estate in Wolverhampton – so no spooky mansions or bats in the belfry! I never felt scared. The kid looked completely normal, I was just a bit confused. I was astounded when my brother, years later, mentioned his friend seeing him; it did send a shiver up my spine.

Now when I remember the events, I just find it intriguing and wonder if I dreamt it all but I know I was awake both times and I also know,that my brother’s mates had no prior knowledge of my experiences.

I’m not sure what ghosts are but I know they’re real.

‘My eyes always water when I tell the story now’

It was 2006, and I was staying over in my friend’s basement flat in Edinburgh. It was quite an old-fashioned, stone building. At around 5am, I woke up and felt like there was something happening in the room. I looked up and saw a little girl staring at me from the end of the sofa. I can’t really remember what she looked like but she was completely still and had her hair tied up in a bun. I obviously got a fright so started to repeat “Hello? Hello?” out loud, as in the moment I couldn’t work out if it was real or if I was hallucinating. I then put my head under my blanket for a second, and by this point my friend who was also in the room woke up and worriedly asked me what was happening.



By the time I looked back up again, the figure was gone. My friend was not convinced as I was still basically asleep so in that half-awake, half-still dreaming state, but I am certain there was something there. When I then told my friend whose house we were in, he got pretty freaked out as I was the second person to have stayed in the living room to mention seeing a little girl.

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At the time, I was less scared and just more confused. To wake up and have someone you don’t recognise looking at you is very odd, and to not be able to see properly doesn’t help. When you try to speak to it and get no response, that is when it started to get frightening, and why I ended up hiding under the blanket. The ghost, spirit, energy was only there for a couple seconds and the other person in the room couldn’t see it, so it was a very uncomfortable experience. I knew I had been engaged with this figure for a few seconds, but then it was just inexplicably gone. My eyes always water when I tell the story now, as I just don’t think I will ever know what was happening.

I think if people haven’t experienced anything like that, they have this notion of ‘ghosts’ as being spooky, scary, dangerous but I believe it’s more of an energy that is left over from someone. I think that’s why I’m so sure that it was real, because I must have woken up because of something in the room waking me somehow, just by changing the energy in the room. I know that it was different from a half asleep hallucination and that something was there, and maybe my willingness to understand that is the difference. It might be that people have been through a similar thing but don’t believe that it is an actual spirit. If someone else had seen the same figure as me, I know it must exist there for some reason. It’s really difficult to work out what I feel about ghosts because I am usually not one to believe in things like that but I can’t deny that experience at all.



‘I don’t expect to be believed whenever I choose to share this story’ – Tim, Hove

One night in December 2004 I was driving back to Brighton from my workplace near Lindfield in Sussex, a little after 11pm. I worked in a care home, and the hours were unsociable. The journey took me along the B2112 from Wivelsfield through the village of Ditchling, and then a left turn onto Beacon Road before ascending the very steep, winding road known as Ditchling Bostall leading up to Ditchling Beacon, the tallest peak on the Sussex Downs.

I passed through the quiet village and, as the streetlights came to an end, flicked on my main beams and shifted into low gear to negotiate the tight bends which snaked their way up the hillside, trees reaching in from either side of the road to meet in the middle.

As I made my way around the fourth turn on the ascent, about two-thirds of the way up the incline, my headlamps illuminated the back of a tall male figure, striding up the right hand side of the road and travelling in the same direction as me. High leather boots, a long, dark coat and a wide-brimmed hat were clearly picked out in the Ford Escort’s halogen main beams. My immediate impulse was to avoid hitting the unexpected walker, who I assumed to be a farmer, perhaps making his way home from one of the village pubs. High earthen banks and dense trees lined both sides of the road, and there was nowhere for a pedestrian to move out of the way of traffic.



It occurred to me that maybe something was wrong, like his car had broken down in the village and he could use a lift up such a punishingly steep hill on such a cold night. I eased off the throttle, coming to a halt halfway between the two bends with my foot on the brake pedal, and lowered the driver’s window. I could clearly see the figure reflected in my door mirror, still striding up the side of the road towards me, and brightly lit by the brake lights. As he drew closer I cleared my throat and prepared to ask him if he needed a lift up the hill and then I noticed one tiny detail: it had no face.



The hat, the coat, and even a scarf knotted at the throat were plain to see in the bright red brake lights but where the face should have been was nothing but darkness. It wasn’t in shadow from the hat, as the brakes were low down and lit the figure completely. It wasn’t a balaclava or any other face covering, as that would at least have shown an outline. Above the scarf and below the hat, there was simply nothing at all.

I tried to rationalise what I’d seen, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I don’t expect to be believed whenever I choose to share this story, and I accept that there is always a high level of ridicule levelled at people who claim they’ve had a brush with something inexplicable.

‘I wouldn’t have entertained the idea of supernatural entities until I had experienced it first hand’ – Matt, Manchester

It was 2005, and I was living in a shared rented house in north Wales. The house itself was an old terraced house that had belonged to an elderly lady before the landlord had purchased it and rented out.

A couple of weeks after my partner and I moved in I was convinced I saw something move quickly upstairs. My room was the front room, and I had a desk at one end. My back was to the door, and whenever I sat there I always felt an uncomfortable sense of being watched.

We’d see movement or a shape that would, very briefly, seem like a white cat out of the corner of our eyes. Almost all of these were either of the shape running up or down the stairs, or sitting at the top on the landing. Both my partner and I experienced them. This continued for the entire two years we lived there. It was unnerving at first, and the first few times we were convinced a cat had got into the house. After a while, we became accustomed to the occasional sense of ‘ghost cat’ and it became a bit of a joke with friends when they visited.

When we lived at the house there was a freezer unit under the stairs. When we moved it, we realised the carpet was damp. We reported it to the landlord who shared an anecdote that whilst he was renovating the house, he’d found loose stone under the stairs and the skull and bones of a cat buried inside. He didn’t know about ‘ghost cat’ until we both burst out laughing and told him.

I wouldn’t have entertained the idea of supernatural entities until I had experienced it first hand. I’m neither religious nor superstitious and find it particularly difficult to explain the ghostly cat stalking up and down the stairs! I’m still dubious of a lot of the stories, as there’s plenty of money to be made on playing on people’s superstition, but I’m certainly a believer in some kind of supernatural ability.

‘There are things we can’t explain and we have to make peace with that’

It was my mother’s 60th birthday and it was the night before a big gathering the following day. Our family - my sisters, their partners and my parents - were all staying the night before the big day. After a lovely evening meal and only a few glasses of wine, we all turned in for a good night’s rest, hoping to be fresh for all the festivities to come.



I stayed in what used to be my childhood bedroom, which was now the guest room. After settling into a gentle slumber only 45 minutes or so must have passed. At that point I was startled awake by the bedroom door, which had been closed, slamming shut with force and giving me quite a start. My husband was still dead to the world; he’s a heavy sleeper. Now awake, I saw what I could only describe as a faint and translucent figure hovering by my bedside. I couldn’t make out a face or distinct shape, but it was gazing at me. Not maliciously. But it did leave me confused and ill at ease. I felt I knew the presence and couldn’t quite adapt to the reality of what was beside me. The figure moved further up the bed. Incredulous, I reached my hand out to touch the space where it floated. Nothing. But in reaching out, I suddenly felt I knew this was my grandfather who had lived with us in our family home until he passed away from meningitis in his early 60s.

Completely freaked out at this point, I turned to face away and instead face towards my husband, clinging for reassurance and he in turn woke up. Nothing was then visible, but my heart was hammering in my chest. I told my family and they believed me entirely. It felt timely and special but creepy all at once. Friends tried to rationalise what had happened for me, it’s not an easy thing to hear from someone who is known for being a pragmatic and slightly cynincal. I am quite an open person with high levels of empathy. This isn’t always a blessing in life but I do think it may have something to do with the visit I received.

There are things we can’t explain and we have to make peace with that. As a staunch atheist that’s a tough belief to hold.

‘My story creeps people out because ... I’m a level-headed strong character’

I was a junior Detective in the 80’s helping out on a particularly gruesome domestic murder investigation in a major UK city.The body was being forensically examined by a pathologist, with myself and a few others acting as witnesses. The mortuary was an old Victorian Gothic building and during the (cold, evening) procedure I was suddenly aware of someone watching me from the corner of the high-vaulted, tiled room.I glanced into the corner and saw what appeared to be a cloud of flies in a column, such as you might see on a hot day at the bottom of the garden; for a split second it coalesced into the faint, transparent shape of a young woman, who smiled briefly at me, then vanished. We solved the case the next day.

All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I had done countless such examinations in the past, but I felt her looking at me before I saw her. It’s quite cathartic sharing the story. Nobody else mentioned seeing anything. My story creeps people out. Because it has some veracity: location, circumstances, I’m a level-headed strong character.

It gave me cause for question, but I’m still a huge sceptic ... perception is not always reality.

‘These experiences I’ve had in my life have shown me just how much we don’t know’ - Ian, Switzerland

My wife of 50 years died in 2009. I was quickly able to find another smaller flat to cover my needs. This flat is about one mile from our old home. This story and two other experiences took place in the three months or so after her death.

I was sitting in the living room watching TV. From my chair a good part of the kitchen was visible. I became aware that my wife, full size, was standing in the middle of a man-high glass vitrine standing in the kitchen corner. She was simply watching me. I believe she was in fact simply letting me know she was still around, so to speak. Oddly enough when I looked directly at the vitrine she wasn’t there. I only saw her out of the corner of my eye – not quite, but I can’t put it a better way.

She appeared to be semi-transparent, to say she shimmered wouldn’t be right but she was sort of silvery. She simply watched me. This lasted for about half a minute and then she was gone. There wasn’t anything like fear on my part, after all it was my wife. In fact I was elated that this was taking place, that she had gone to the trouble to show herself to me and that she knew where I now lived!

It was a gladdening experience and I did for a while hope that it would repeat itself, but it didn’t. It was sufficient.

It only confirmed once again that these experiences I’ve had in my life have shown me just how much we don’t know.

If you have a ghost story to share, please do so in the comments below. We’ll pick a selection of the best – so make sure to share as many details as possible.