ATRD Ep. 151 - Scary At Work & Paranormal Horror Stories
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And as always, thank you. Hey, I listened to your podcast at nighttime during the long graveyard shifts. So, maybe it was one of your spooky stories that influenced this. My office is open 24 hours a day, with service personnel numbers dropping to low levels during the night, especially during holidays like New Year's or Christmas. My job was to keep an eye on the servers to ensure that things were running okay.

My job could easily be replaceable, but the company boasts that there is a 24-hour technician supervision. Essentially, I spend most of my time on the phone relaxing, playing games, and doing nothing. The hardest part is not being so bored that I fall asleep. I also work the day shift, too, all depending on the month. Around the office, things have been moved or have gone missing for quite a while now.

It's typical office stuff. People steal or move things. Sometimes it happens. What irritated me was when one of the customer service reps, who's into spiritual things, would say, ''The office ghost is playing up,'' or ''Steve is up to something again.'' Yeah, sure, Carol. A damn ghost cares about what goes on at this company. It was a shift over a long weekend with a public holiday on the next Monday.

No one wanted the shift, but since I needed the extra cash, I was happy to take it. A lot of people chucked a sickie and miraculously didn't show up for work. Other than a security guard who would come by at midnight to the early morning, and a cleaner finishing her shift, I was there alone. I was sitting at my desk texting my girlfriend when I thought I saw someone standing in the hallway.

I jumped and immediately looked to see nobody there. I mentioned it to my girlfriend, she laughed at me, and told me to send a picture of the hallway, so I did. She then sent back a poorly photoshopped image of a ghost on top of the word "boo" and told me she was going to show the picture of the ghost to her friends. We laughed and chatted until she went to bed, and I walked through my floor to stretch my legs.

and then I waved at the security camera. I saw another figure standing there, and I returned to my desk to send a message to Jeff, the security guard, asking if he had seen anyone or if he was on the floor. He told me that he wasn't, and then asked what was wrong. I told him that I thought I saw someone, and I asked him if he would take a look.

There was a pause. I'm guessing he was going through all the cameras, and he told me that he hadn't seen anyone but that he would look around. After about an hour or so, he returned to my desk and told me that he had gone outside to see if there were any cars. There was no sign that anybody was there, at least not since the cleaning staff had left, and that he checked the car park and lower levels of the building. I figured I was just tired.

I remember listening and trying to discreetly look at the time while he was talking to me. We were talking about all sorts of things. Life, what we were going to do after work, our families, a general conversation, when we both noticed a shadowy figure. It was faint but visible, and it was walking down the hallway. It moved from one room to another before it disappeared.

It had that vaguely humanoid shape of a head, torso, arms, and legs, but I couldn't tell if it was wearing clothes or not. I kind of gave him an I-told-you-so look, and Jeff looked stunned by what he had just seen. I asked him if he saw it too for sure, and he said he did. Neither of us spoke about it again. From what I know, no one has died on the property, and I don't know if the land is haunted or whatever-

The building is still pretty new. It was built in the 70s or 80s, I believe. So I doubt that it has any historical significance. Oh, and that photo that I sent my girlfriend? It didn't have anything on it, other than a boring empty hallway in case you were wondering. I was going to send the joke picture in, but I decided against it.

If anything else happens around the office, I will let you know, and I'm going to try to get a picture to see if the mystery ghost makes an appearance. Now, either Jeff was pulling a really elaborate joke on me, or there is a ghost haunting that building. That, quote-unquote, Steve, is real. I can't say that I've seen or felt anything similar, even when I've been working the night shifts."

I don't know. It's something that I just can't explain what happened. Cheers, Raven. Hope you like my story, and thanks for getting me through the long work hour days. I'm a 43-year-old female, and this happened when I was 23. I was married at the time, and we had a one-year-old daughter. We were moving into a new house, but it wasn't quite ready yet. So for a few months, we lived above my husband's aunt's bar.

Now, for a backstory, we lived at the time in a small town in Montana. His family has been there for generations. His aunt owned a large bar that had a small dance floor, and there was a bowling alley in the back. The building was huge. This building was well over 100 years old and had been a brothel, a schoolhouse, a restaurant, and now the bar slash bowling alley. It definitely had history.

The old, dusty, unrenovated apartment above it was just as big, but we lived rent-free for a few months, so we didn't complain. Now, this town is small, as most are in Montana, so everyone knows everyone and all of their business. So at the bar, all the bartenders hated closing at night. Some of them would see a little boy at night running around. The bowling pins would fall in the dark,

You would close the bar down and lock the door, and suddenly all the window neon signs would come back on. I didn't mind it, and was never scared in the actual bar when I started taking over the night shifts. The apartment above it, however, was a different story. I hated being there alone. My one-year-old would scream at night in her room like she was terrified. The apartment was very large and had several rooms.

The house was separated by a very long hallway, living room on one side, bedrooms and kitchen on the other end. I would hear footsteps at night and you could tell that they were cowboy boots because of the way they walked along the hardwood floors. I knew this was an old brothel, and even in some of the closed off rooms that were hidden behind insulation...

The old wallpaper was up with bullet holes in it, and old pieces of furniture that were literally 100 years old. Most of that stuff had been blocked off with insulation, and we did not go in there. There was a single smaller room that, whoever lived there, did a lot of woodwork. So the floor in this room was literally raw wood.

and you had to wear shoes when you went in because the walls and the floor were just covered in splinters, and it was not safe to be in. I hated that room, because even when the apartment was super hot in the summer, that room was always freezing cold. As soon as you crossed over into the threshold, it was cold. So I had a desk and some storage and a couch that I had thrown in there, and I only went in when I absolutely had to.

This room was catty-corner from our master bedroom across the hall. One night, my now ex-husband was sleeping and snoring so unbelievably bad that I had to leave the bedroom before I smothered him with a pillow. The couch wasn't super comfortable, but the pull-out couch in this cold room was a lot easier to sleep on, so I decided to go in there that night and sleep so that I didn't have to hear him snoring so bad.

I decided to leave the lights completely on, and that way I would be fine. I hated it, but I eventually did fall asleep, and at about 4 in the morning, my ex-husband's alarm started going off. It woke me because it didn't wake him, and all I could hear was the alarm going off on top of his snoring. So, I yelled at him to get up. He rolled over and hit snooze and went right back to snoring. I laid there, super irritated,

because I knew that alarm was going to go off again and there was no way I was going back to sleep, so I just laid there with my eyes closed. Well, once again, the alarm started going off and so I was yelling at him to shut it off, and I sat up on the pull-out bed and opened my eyes. It was like a disco club in that room. The light switch was being flipped super fast and turning the lights on and off, on and off.

It took me a real minute to realize what the hell was going on. And that's when I stood up to leave the room, and he was standing in the doorway. It was a super dark black shadow. It was definitely a man because he was tall and dressed like a cowboy. He was leaning with his arm up on the door and his one leg crossed over the other, and he was staring at me. You could see the outline of his cowboy hat and his cowboy boots, and he had his hand on his hip.

Normally, I love this kind of stuff, but when you actually see it in person, it scares the crap out of you. So, I screamed for my ex-husband and went running out of the room, and as I got to the doorway, he disappeared. I was almost hyperventilating, because I've never actually seen a spirit. I've just heard them and had things move and doorknobs shake and things like that, but that never really bothered me.

My husband at the time was just irritated and thought I was having a bad dream, and told me that there were no ghosts in the apartment. Fast forward about a month, this was right before we got our new house and moved out. My husband had been drinking one night, and I knew he was going to snore really bad, so he slept on the couch in the living room, and I slept in our bedroom.

It was a long hallway between the two, and just as you got to the end of the hallway and turned, that was where the opening of my door was at. So, from where I was laying in bed, I could not actually see down the hallway. He was laying on the couch, and I knew that he wasn't asleep yet because I didn't hear the snoring, and I was laying in bed reading a book. All of a sudden, in the dark...

We could hear really heavy steps walking down the hallway, starting at his end and walking towards me. You could hear the cowboy boots, and how heavy the steps were that they were walking very slowly, and just as the steps got to the end of the hallway, probably ten feet from where I was laying in bed, they stopped. Had the spirit walked just four more feet, he would have been standing in the doorway and I would have seen him, but the footsteps stopped.

and all of a sudden the apartment got extremely quiet, so I called out to my husband and asked if he heard it. He was extremely quiet for a minute, and then he said, ''Yeah, I did hear it. I'll be sleeping in bed tonight with you so you can deal with my snoring.'' It scared the living hell out of him, and we moved out shortly after, but he never corrected me when I said that place was haunted afterwards.''

Back when I was a teenager, my parents liked to go to Montana and see the state. Plus, as many ghost towns as we could.

I wanted to be as cool as my brother, so we would sneak off time to time and smoke a cigarette, as my parents read every single sign through the town, so it took them forever to get where we were. Now, keep in mind, my dad and I have always had things happen to us when we walked through, but nothing too crazy until that day. I can't remember what the town was, but as soon as we started walking, it just felt odd.

As I said before, it took my parents forever to read everything. So my brother and I went ahead and snuck away for the cigarette. And then after we were done, we went into this building. And when we got to the stairs, the door slammed closed. Thinking it was just the wind, we continued to the second floor, and that's when we started hearing voices. Not the normal talking, but children's voices. And they got louder and louder.

and then the screaming of the adults started. We looked at each other and tried to say anything, but the other voices swallowed our voices up. I was ready to get out of there, so I ran down the stairs first, got to the door, but it wouldn't open. My brother tried to open it, but he said that it felt like someone was pushing it closed. Us freaking out at this point, we banged on the door and my parents came and opened it. We ran out.

I just couldn't get the noises out of my head. The crying, laughing of children, and the blood screaming of adults was just too much. My parents were reading the sign out front of the building when we started banging on the door. They never heard any of it, just us banging on the door. As it turned out, that building started out as a schoolhouse, and then it was a makeshift hospital when there was a war going on.

And then after that, it was where people went to die because of the various diseases that went through the town. Now I'm an adult with children of my own, and when we go to ghost towns, I do not go in the buildings, even if it's okay to. Hey there, Raven. I was doing some housework while listening to scary stories on my Alexa when yours popped up at random. Needless to say, I subscribed after a couple of videos. Thank you.

Recently I listened to one of your videos about a creepy co-worker story, and I realized I have more than one, but I have one that truly stands out. Here goes nothing. Back in 98, I was a junior in high school. I needed to get myself a reliable vehicle in order to both take my road test and have a decent source of transportation to and from school for the remaining time I had left.

Because, let's face it, I was overriding that damned bus. Even in the 90s, finding a job could still prove difficult, and in my area, they were looking for people with a bit more experience, or the fast food places were not willing to compromise with my school schedule. Eventually, I got a job working at a country club on the weekends and Friday nights. At first, everything seemed peaches and cream.

A good portion of the staff were either my age or close enough to my age that we had a lot in common. However, we all worked with this guy by the name of Monty. Picture an antagonist from the 1980s John Cusack movie, or watch the old Twisted Sister video for We're Not Going to Take It, and you have an idea as to the look and attitude of this guy.

He was in charge of the kitchen and the front areas in the little restaurant on the Country Club Greens, and to nobody's surprise, he was a nepo baby. The person in charge of the whole shebang was his brother, which meant he could get away with pretty much anything without consequence. My first day on the job, he warned me about the "weird kid" Devante.

He told me he didn't say much, and that he was really good at half-assing jobs. So, there was a good chance I would have to go behind him to make sure things were done correctly. Lastly, he told me that under no circumstances was I to engage him in conversation in any way, shape, or form, because if he actually did join in, he wouldn't shut up and nothing would get done.

So, here I am, visualizing a sadly stereotypical stoner, or Star Trek nerd. Somebody with bad hygiene. You know, the kind of person you would picture with a warning like that. I don't say anything about the warning to my coworkers. I just do my work for the day, and relax with some Tupac when I get home. Devante hadn't worked that day, but I was certain I was going to meet him soon.

The second day on the job was a bit more relaxed. Monty was off meeting up with some suppliers halfway across the state, which meant people had a bit more freedom to speak. One of our waitresses, who I'll call Claire, was one of the only original employees for this little out-of-the-way place. Shortly before I'd been hired, Monty decided to let go a good portion of the staff.

because he could hire people at a cheaper pay rate and make more money for himself at the end of the year. Claire wasn't having this. She'd been working for this little restaurant for the better part of a decade, and when he tried that with her, she read him the riot act. Needless to say, she was the only employee he gave a wide berth whenever they had to work together. But when Claire was running the ship, it was efficient. No more stressful than I needed to be.

We're talking about a restaurant setting, after all. And people genuinely enjoyed working under her. She knew what she was doing. And if I had to describe her overall personality, I would use the term firm, but kind. She didn't lambast people over little mistakes, more often than not. And especially if she had the time, she would take that person to the side and show them how they messed up, and then show them the correct way to do the job.

That day, we were short a cashier, and so Claire decided that she would take me to the side to walk me through how the system works. As she's working with me and we're talking, I just casually mentioned the warning about Devante. Why am I not surprised was her response, as she rolled her eyes in disgust. I don't get it, but Monty's got it in for that poor kid.

He's late every day, but he's got his reasons. But he works just as hard as everybody else. Sometimes even harder. Monty's just an immature ass who managed to live nicely off Taddy's money. You'll have a chance to meet Devante literally any second. He was due five minutes ago. His ride must have gotten stuck in traffic. Sure enough, within the three minutes of having that conversation with Claire as she's teaching me how to work the register...

We see what I remember to be a social services van pull up to the front door. The driver helps a passenger out, and as they're walking him to the entrance, I can see he's wearing our typical dress code, a hunter green polo with the restaurant logo on the left lapel and a pair of khaki dress pants. He's got this look of trepidation on his face. When he walks through the door, he looks around as if surveying the area for a threat. He sees Claire, and his face lights up.

He takes off full steam towards her and gives her a giant hug. This is Devante, and he's my sweet teddy bear. She says as she reciprocates the hug. I introduce myself and reach in for a handshake, and he smiles as he says, put her there, and then gives me the best damn handshake of my life. The thing about Devante is that Monty talked him up like he was some sort of problem employee, and it was nothing like that. Devante had Down Syndrome.

I got a chance to spend the day working with him, and he was honestly exactly how Claire put it, one of the hardest workers there. I watched him buzz around the tables picking up used dishes between courses, cleaning up spills, efficiently cleaning the seating areas after customers left, and just being generally friendly towards the patrons.

So many of them left with smiles on their faces, and quite a few of them commented on how hard he was working, and how proud his parents must be of him. Anytime somebody said something pleasant to him, I watched him beam. One giant ear-to-ear grin, and a few times even blushed. He was polite, and I could tell he was enjoying his job. 7pm rolled around, and it was the end of Devante's shift.

I took a 15 minute break just to get off my feet for a bit and enjoy a Dr. Pepper. He decides to do the same thing and he sits at the bar enjoying his cold beverage and waiting for his ride. And then something happens that shed a lot of light on certain things. Monty came back from the meeting and decided to stop off to see how we did for the day. Devante sees him walk in the door and then all of a sudden he starts staring at his feet. His face goes expressionless.

and he was, basically for lack of a better term, hanging his head in shame. The kid had nothing to be ashamed of. Frankly, I had the pleasure of working with him for just one day and I could see that he was eager to please. So, now, all the things that Monty told me made zero sense. Monty walks past the bar and sees the two of us sitting right next to each other,

He looks at me and says, "Get your ass back to work. I told you not to socialize with him. He's a troublemaker." Before I could say anything, Claire chimed in, "JT has 14 minutes left on his 15 minute break. He just sat down." He then turns his attention to Devonte, and he's got this unnecessary look of disgust on his face. "What about you?" He says, in a borderline offensive way.

Demonte didn't respond. He just kept looking at his feet, trying to not make eye contact with his boss. Monty goes to repeat the question, but before he can get the second word out, Claire chimes in from behind the register again. His shift ended not too long ago. He's just waiting on his ride. I don't see what the big problem is. She changes the subject before Monty can respond to her. "'So what's going on with the meeting?' "'Come back to the office so we can touch base if anything has changed.'

Monty sighs and nods at her before finally saying okay, but as he's walking away, I could almost swear I heard him call Devante a M-slur for people with Down syndrome under his breath. I almost let him have it right there, but I couldn't prove anything, and that was the problem. So, I bit my tongue so hard it practically bled, and for the next couple of months, I worked my ass off and kept my head down.

That's when I noticed the pattern of everyone else doing exactly the same thing as I was, every time Monty was around. And even on days when he was off, we weren't necessarily safe. Monty was well off, but he wasn't what you would call disgustingly rich. If anything, he was a heavily diluted upper middle class guy with some rich friends. There were times when he would show up in order to get a late lunch or dinner,

And there was always, always alcohol involved. I still recall a time when he came in with his wife and a few friends, a little bit around 3pm for an early dinner. I watched as they all sat there and slammed down mojitos and rum and cokes before 5pm. One after another. Everybody except his wife got absolutely sloshed.

At this point, I had saved up a little over $2,300, and I had my eye on a Chevy station wagon that was in good shape. I would tell myself, not that much longer. Just get the car, save up for a six-month car insurance down payment, and go from there. You can always find another job. The thing is, I had no idea that this would be my last day on the job. I didn't get fired. I stood up for a friend.

Devonte was doing his normal busboy thing, and he was as efficient as ever. He didn't once make eye contact with Monty or anybody else in this table. Monty started making all these comments, and he was so drunk by this point that he wasn't even trying to hide anything. At one point, he purposely spilled what was left of his salad on the floor, and laughed as Devonte rushed over to clean up the mess of salad greens and Caesar dressing soaking into the carpet.

He turns to two other gentlemen at the table. I use the term gentlemen in a ridiculously loose way here, and starts laughing as he cleans. See that, boys? I told you that program was great. I can hire up these people and pay them peanuts. He's practically an indentured servant. At this statement, the three of them laughed like the absolute jackasses they were. I watched as one of them pegged Devante in the head with a dinner roll.

He reached his breaking point. I watch this poor kid walk away from the table with tears in his eyes. He then starts to clench his fist at his sides and turns red in the face before finally turning back towards Monty and screaming out, ''Why are you always so mean to me?'' in a way that bordered on primal rage. Monty gets a look on his face that I can only describe as a sadist's grin. ''Oh, look, the mistake speaks.'' He yells out just as loudly while laughing.

The other two chuckleheads laugh with him just as loudly, but then, I noticed his wife. She's clearly not seeing any humor in this situation. As a matter of fact, she was just as angry as the rest of us. He turns to his wife and points to her like he wants her to join in on this mocking session. Instead, she stands up from the chair, picks up the half a slice of death by chocolate chocolate cake on her dessert plate,

and proceeds to splatter it right on top of his head. There, now you look like the absolute craphead you are. She screams in his face. Monty and his goons sit there in stunned silence. His wife gets up from her seat, and even though she was a little bit tipsy, she does her best to comfort the now shaking and bawling Devante. She apologizes to him for her husband being such a monster. Her exact words. But the damage had been done.

This kid, who was absolutely harmless, was bullied by a man pushing 50. A truly pathetic sight. By now it was quite apparent that even though he hadn't spoken whenever Monty was around, he wasn't deaf. He heard all of those hateful and hurtful things being spewed about him and towards him, and he'd finally had enough.

And then the craziest thing happened. Claire takes off her name badge and apron. She walks over to Monty and she throws both in his face before walking out. His wife says quite loudly, You know what, Claire? I'm right there with you. And she walks out right behind her. And then a procession of people, his entire staff, myself included, just quit on the spot. We all walked out the door.

Devonte asked me what was happening and I told him that he didn't work for Monty anymore. He started telling me that he didn't have a ride right now. Well, I'll call my dad from the payphone. After I tell him what's going on, I'm certain he won't mind giving you a ride. And that's exactly what I did. I actually had to talk my dad down because he wanted to give Monty a combination of a piece of his mind and a foot in his ass. So, I had to talk my dad out of a potential assault charge.

That following Thursday night, I was at home studying for finals, and I got a phone call from Claire. She said that she needed my help with something, and we needed to meet up at my local library that upcoming Saturday. I told her no problem, and we arranged a time. I got there a little after 1pm, and I noticed Claire, and a bunch of my old coworkers, Devante included, and Monty's wife Lauren.

Claire gives me a hug. She was far different outside of the workplace. She was only 26, but she gave off the biggest motherly vibes of anybody that I've ever known other than my own mom. She then tells me to sit and to listen to what Lauren had to say. As it turned out, Lauren had no idea her husband was such a piece of crap. She had heard things, but she had just chalked it up to jealousy.

It wasn't until their daughter caught her dad talking amongst a friend at a local grocery store that she noticed he was dropping a bunch of racially charged language towards a Korean family. At the time, Lauren was in denial. Her daughter was a typical 90s goth kid, and she figured that she was just being edgy or crying out for attention. But the possibility that she could have been telling the truth ate at the back of her mind for quite a while. It wasn't until she saw him borderline blackout drunk

bullying Devante with his piece of crap friends, that the reality of her daughter's words hit her. She had dropped an anonymous tip after calling social services in regards to the special needs program that Devante was a part of. She had everybody who witnessed the events that unfolded that day meet her at the library, because the social services building was just around the corner. She got the name of a caseworker and told her everything.

She advised Lauren to do exactly what we were doing now. All of us went into that social services building that day, and over the course of three hours unloaded on Monty and his various behaviors. The caseworkers told us that they had had their suspicions because another girl who was a deaf mute had worked for him the summer prior, and by the time she finally quit the job, she was more content to go on full-time disability.

When pressed as to why, the girl had said she didn't want to talk about it. So, as it turns out, Monty violated the Americans with Disabilities Act on numerous occasions, and there were just enough people there to corroborate what would eventually be the man's downfall. At the end of the day, it didn't matter that technically Monty's brother was also his boss. When the state government got involved, that was it.

Monty was cuffed, booked, and word certainly spread around town. I normally don't say that somebody deserves to be a social pariah, but in this case, absolutely. His wife divorced him, his brother couldn't stand the shame of being around him anymore so his family cut him off, and he eventually self-exiled himself from town. I have no clue where he ended up.

The only thing I can say is that I really hope this was a sobering experience for him in more than one way. By now, he's a little old man if his liver held off that long, and they say age and wisdom go hand in hand. In his case, I can only hope this is true, because let's be honest, there's no shortage of people like him out there to this very day, and he can only push people so much before they completely snap.

He was lucky that Devonte was such a sweetheart. I really wished for the longest time that Monty would have just sat down and shut up and gotten the chance to know this wonderful kid, but reality is reality. And at that point in time in his life, he was a real crapstorm of a human being. I stayed friends with Devonte well throughout the rest of high school, and through my entire college career. Anytime I came home to visit, I made a point to stop off and see him.

People with Down syndrome don't live as long as most people, and I got the unfortunate news that his heart had given out one night shortly after Christmas 2007. It was one of the hardest phone calls I've ever received. If I can take any solace in losing such a great friend, it's that people from all throughout his life, even his old job, the ones who stood up for him, people we didn't even know, showed up for his funeral.

There were so many fantastic stories told about this young man that touched so many lives. My takeaway from this whole scenario is that life is short, and you should treat people how you would want to be treated, because consequences are quite real. We honestly need to do better, and be better, and at the end of the day, it starts with you. Dear Raven, Your channel is one of the best out there.

Thanks for that, and I hope this story can contribute. It turned out a bit long, so sorry for that. I don't know where to begin properly, but it involves my grandpa and the gift you could say that he had. A little background, I'm from a rather big Dutch-Indo family. Dutch-Indo is about the best way to translate this, I think.

There are families from the former Dutch East Indies colony of mixed European and Asian heritage. I don't know if our Asian side has anything to do with this, but my grandpa always had dreams that proved to be partly predictions or had some kind of meaning in them. My grandpa seemed to know more than most of us or seemed to be in closer contact to some hidden spiritual side of life than most of us.

Like, he once had a dream in which an angel showed him a passport with 92 in it. He believed it meant he was to become 92 years old. But it turned out my grandmother was to pass away in his 92nd year. His dreams were always cryptic like that. And it was always in hindsight that you could say, well, that probably foretold something.

Another one was where he dreamed of two sparrows sitting on an electrical cord, like you see stretched over the countryside. The first sparrow is then hit by some kind of projectile, falls down to the ground and died very quickly. The second sparrow is then also hit but lives and struggles.

I believe Grandpa dreamed the fact that my aunt was diagnosed with cancer and died two weeks after, and then my uncle was also diagnosed with cancer, but he lived for another year or so before passed away. About himself in his 93rd year, he asked my cousin if we, the family, could sing the Christmas song Silent Night, Holy Night at his funeral. This was quite out of the blue somewhere in summer, in July or something.

So my cousins said, "Sure, Grandpa. Anything you wish, of course." My grandpa was to pass away on Christmas Eve of that year. Now, the Dutch Indo-culture, or at least our family culture, focuses on personal modesty in favor of the family, which is why we are very close despite being a big family. I had five uncles and six aunts, and I have about 25 cousins, and the older ones all have children.

My grandparents' modest apartment always was everyone's second home, and you could always just drop by for coffee, or a meal, or just to read a magazine. It was all good. I remember as early as a young child, you would sit on the ground. When you were a little older, you could sit on one of the stools, and as you got older, you could have a spot on the chair or the sofa.

until the house got full of older family members and then you moved a step back on that ladder again. This is to describe how special it felt to me that my grandparents loved everyone in that family, but that I felt you as an individual shouldn't expect to be noticed very much. Not that it was a bad thing, just a small sacrifice to be part of such a big loving family. Now for my personal story that I would like to submit. I myself have never been very good at school.

You know how teachers used to say how you are there for your own future and not for them? Then why do I have to be here? I would think, as a young kid and stupid kid. A few decades later now, my fiance says I have problems with authority. I naturally disagree. I'm not one to be fighting all the time. I just tend not to listen to people that don't interest me. Okay, so maybe she's a little right.

But that made me drop out of school before graduation year, and then I went to work. I figured you could either suffer through school longer than I did, or you would have to accept lower-end jobs with less pay. I always felt there had to be something that I would be good at, but most people aren't, so that I could earn decent money doing that. Of course, the wise adult would talk that down immediately to make you conform to school and everything.

But then, after about 10 years of dead-end jobs, I found a training program to become public transport bus driver. None of my family had ever done such kind of work, so it was a bit of a leap for me, but I took it. The selection process was tough, but I managed a cognitive capability score that, on average, only 1.74 people out of 100 would score better than me.

I'm proud of this, but also must say that I have some talent, right? The complete program took two years. The first year would be three days working and one day of school. The second day would be one part official school subjects so that we would get an official diploma. The other part would be learning about the whole public transport operations side.

At the end of the two years, you would have paid back half the cost for the driver's license from working, and the company would gift you the other half. Then you would be set with a decent job, of course. At the end of the program, there would be a graduation ceremony, and a day prior, I got a feeling that I would be asked to say a few words on behalf of the class. With all I told about my grandpa at this point...

I can safely say that I do sometimes have these feelings, or intuitions, too. Mostly when driving. I would have a thought or feeling that I should take it a bit more easy ahead, and then I would turn the corner to find that something would have happened there, or traffic would be partially stuck. So the day prior to the graduation ceremony, I thought, if I'm to speak in front of everybody, then I'll start off with a joke.

I'll thank them for the honor and then pull out a stack of papers, as if I had prepared a massively long speech. To that end, I looked for some papers that I could fold and stuff into my pocket for the next day. I found a stack of papers, and I randomly picked up the upper portion of them to see what they were, but they were too valuable for that. You see, since somewhere in the 70s or 80s, my grandparents always had a notebook lying in their apartment.

Anyone who would come over would write something, anything in it, if they would like. It was a very early low-tech version of what would now be a family group chat. Then, when my grandpa passed away, my uncle took the project upon himself to go through all the boxes of notebooks and type out every entry of my grandpa's, and other stories my grandpa told about his time in the Second World War and such.

He then printed them and gave them to my dad and their siblings, and my dad gave his copied stack to me, because I like history and stuff. So, I put the top portion of the stack down beside the bottom part, and went ahead with my plan with some different papers. We had a great graduation day. I was, in fact, asked to say a few words like I expected, and I dreaded it a bit, but the joke worked out well, and everybody laughed.

A few days later, I came across that stack of papers again. I was going to put them away neatly, so I double-checked because I forgot which would be the top and which would be the bottom. That's when I noticed the page that had come to face up after I took the random portion off. The very last entry on that page immediately drew my attention. It was a bit on what my grandpa had dreamed on the 26th of November, 2011, which was titled, A Weird Dream.

This is the interesting bit, and as literally translated as I can. I dreamed I was in a bus on my way home. Very vaguely, I knew that I was on the bus with my mom. We rode for a while, and all of a sudden I was alone in a different bus with different passengers and an Indo bus driver. Before, I may have read it and didn't think much of it.

But given these circumstances, I immediately thought, "Wow, did my grandpa ride along with me?" Mind you, I entered into the program in 2018, so some seven years after my grandpa dreamed this, and after he would pass away on Christmas Eve of 2011. Now, in the present, both of my parents and all four of my grandparents have passed away.

and although I miss them all the time, I quite often miss my paternal grandpa. A couple of the bus routes also pass right by my grandparents' old home, and I have so often thought about how cool it would have been to tell grandpa what times I would pass, and I'm very sure that he would have waited by the window to wave at me. I'm actually crying right now thinking of all this. I hope you can work with this, Raven, or in any case, I thank you for reading this.

I love to listen to the stories you read while being on the road doing my rounds, so please, keep it up. Hey again, Raven. You know I'm all about true crime and interesting cases. That's why when my dad told me about his experience back when he was young, you know, it was freaky. Here's his story. My dad was still pretty young. His dad, my grandfather, had an office literally next door to the apartment building.

That was good, given at the time there was a war in my home country. Obviously, for security reasons, I won't say where. Anyway, my grandfather told my dad to go get him an important file from his office. My dad agreed instantly, since, quote, I was a good boy, he told me. He went to the office building next door. By the way, I have to mention that there was no electricity due to the conditions of the war.

So the elevator was not working. So my dad went for the stairs to the very last floor. It was a building that had an effect on you, that includes seeing your shadow go behind you with every step. It was a building with shades of sun from the windows that went all across the stairway. I hope that makes sense. So, at one point, my dad has almost reached the very top floor until he noticed something.

His shadows, his reflections, had completely stopped. I mean this as in instead of them going with him, it stopped completely still on a floor he was now above. My dad describes that in that moment, he started skipping four stairs at a time out of fear. After he told me this, I was creeped out.

His shadows that were supposedly going with him at his speed completely stopped in its tracks and were no longer moving with him. That was all from me, and I just had to share this with you and your viewers to see what you all would think about it. It could have been a hallucination from the building effect of the stairway, and I'm willing to believe it was. Much love, homie, and keep up the great work. Thank you, Cryptic.

So, I have this friend that comes over at 6am every day, because his parents work and so he wakes me up and it goes on like this every day. One day, I heard a cold breath say my name and I jolted awake. All of the sudden, my friend was in my room so I thought that he was tricking me, and he denied it, and I believed him.

But later on, we were talking, and all of a sudden I heard that same cold voice say something about leaving. And then all of a sudden the camera in my room that my parents use tells us to start walking to school. And to this day, I've never heard that voice again. But that's my story. Sorry it's short. When I was fresh out of high school, I took a year off before I started going into the workforce.

I have a disability, a learning and mood disability, and I knew that I wouldn't survive in retail. There was an outreach program that I was a part of that promised to find a job for me instead. I had a worker who wanted me to work in her husband's restaurant. I wanted to work somewhere nearby my house, but I ended up in an old folks home where they used harsh chemicals in the dishwasher.

One day I had a freak accident where the chemicals went into my gloves and seeped into my hands. My hands were red when I came home, and it wasn't bad until I tried to go to sleep. They were hot, so a few times during the night, I ran cold water on them and slept with my hands balled into a fist. In the morning, my left hand had a huge bubble on the back.

My right hand was not as bad, and I thought my right hand that I usually eat with would be least affected than my left for some reason. I showed my aunt, and they took me to the walk-in clinic. The receptionist said they couldn't do anything because it could have been an allergic reaction. They suggested that I go to the hospital. As the day went on, the heat came in waves in my hands, and I couldn't stop twitching my face.

It was a few hours before the doctor came and saw me. I was still in my pajamas top and house coat and pajama bottoms. We told the doctor what happened, and he told me that it was a chemical burn because of the harsh chemicals in the dishwasher. They ended up cutting open the bubble and wrapped it up, and as the days went on, I had to go see my grandma to get my hands wrapped and clean clothes.

so I then witnessed first hand the stages of skin healing and chemical burns. I hope I don't sound completely crazy sharing this. Hearing these stories about ghosts and spirits who moved on helps me to feel like my experience was validated. Either that, or I truly was crazy at the time this story occurred. It involves my first and only instance where I felt like I truly went elsewhere in my dreams.

I was 16 years old when the pop singer Michael Jackson died. He was someone I adored, and I knew everything there was to publicly know about him back then. Please, no critical judgment. Back then, I was an only child without a father and just a few friends. Michael with his music and magnetic personality was my distraction from my life of isolation and trouble connecting with people.

I could identify with some of his issues. The body dysmorphia, the pressure from family with unique religious views, and having a painfully obvious skin disorder fueled from stress. I can never claim to ever know what it would be like to be in his shoes, but I saw him. I saw the pain. I knew what some of it felt like. I was desperately trying to figure out who I was with little guidance.

I loved him and was admittedly a little obsessed. Michael was the only father figure I could get, and identified with many of his flaws. I would be an entirely different person today had I not discovered him as all the other kids at the time listened to artists that dwindled in comparisons. This was the mid-2000s. You can check out yourself what artists sang about, I didn't care for much of it.

Michael's work revolved around love and kindness and seemed to really care about people. I was aware of the allegations made against him and determined that he was innocent. Even now, as an adult, being a parent myself, I'm pretty sure his behavior was a result of arrested development and a lifetime of mistreatment. He didn't do what they accused him of. It was proven the parents were faking the kid's illness and wanted money. But moving on. His death crushed me.

I mourned him like I had lost a family member. The news of his passing briefly broke the internet. The world was stunned, and I felt like a part of me died. Silly, yes, but to me it was like I had indeed lost my father. The world was that small. So, with all that said, let me tell you what the late King of Pop has to do with my story. I believe that I can at least partially tell when there is a spirit nearby.

No, I didn't see or hallucinate Michael Jackson, the world-famous pop star in my house. That would be truly insane. But before his death, I could swear there was a portal close by somewhere. My bedroom was in the furnished basement. More than once, it sounded like someone was walking down the steps. Once at night, I was startled awake by the sound of someone in my room ripping a poster off of my wall.

Another few times when I had friends over for a sleepover, one told me in the morning that she saw something in the shape of a man passing through. Sometimes my computer or television would act up in the same inexplicable way. This is what piqued my interest in ghosts and the paranormal. Not long after he died, I had slipped into, I'm not sure what, a trance? The only way I could describe it was that I was and was not asleep.

My consciousness was in two places at once, and in my mind's eye, I was standing in a huge, dark, round room with a dome overhead filled with clouds. It's been said that those who pass away can visit you in your dreams or send you messages. I wondered if, since I was half-conscious, I could try reaching out to Michael. No such luck. When I told my then-boyfriend, now-husband, about what I experienced, he warned me not to try it again.

It had something to do with running the risk of letting in bad spirits or something. He really hates it when I open spiritual doors. A few weeks later, I had an experience that hasn't ever happened again to this day. For three consecutive nights in a row, I had vivid, lucid dreams. I was aware that I was dreaming, but this did not wake me up. In these dreams, all of my senses were present except for smell.

Everything was more vibrant than in reality, especially the colors. It didn't stop these dreams from being nonsensical, such as being an infinite parking garage turning into a wreck hall, cruise ship, but I wasn't alone. In these dreams, Michael was present in some form or another. It felt more like he was in the background more than anything. He, at least my subconscious version, was there keeping me company.

It was like I was sharing this place with him, exploring the dreams for the adventure and fun of it. We even said our goodbyes instead of me just waking up abruptly from the morning alarm clock. The second night, his form was growing warped and fuzzy, and the last night of these incredible lucid dreams will stay with me for the rest of my life. He was hugging me goodbye, and it felt permanent. It really felt like I was being hugged, and my view was centered on a bright and blue sky.

when I didn't have black, curly long hair blowing in my face. It was like a wordless goodbye, and I haven't had another lucid dream since. More recently, in present day, mediums have claimed to have been able to connect to Michael in the past. I don't know for certain spirit boxes are real for sure. You know those devices that can allegedly let you hear the real voices of those who have passed on?

To some who use these spirit boxes, Michael has been known to visit these mediums regularly. These mediums say he has a strong spirit, and that's why he can be felt so easy. So, that's what made me think back and wonder whether my lucid dreams were real or not, or whether I really was delusional and a grief-stricken girl standing over a pop star.

Anyway, that's my story, and I hope it was somewhat entertaining. Hey there, friends. I hope that you enjoyed this collection of scary stories on this episode of the As The Raven Dreams podcast.

If the platform you're on has the option to follow podcast and you enjoyed my work, please do consider doing so. Also, leaving ratings and reviews are super important for the algorithm to support the growth of the podcast. I'm just one guy doing this. I don't have a team. It's literally just me doing everything. So any support like that is greatly appreciated. Never expected, though. So if you go above and beyond with that, I do appreciate it.

Some platforms also allow you to leave comments, and if you feel inclined to do so, please do. I would appreciate that. I do have a Patreon and a merch store that you can also check out if you want to support a little further. The Patreon side of things gets you early access to all of my content. It is formatted differently as it goes in line with what my YouTube channel is, but it is the same stories, just different collections.

There is also a website, astheravendreams.com, where you can check out pretty much everything about me, my social media platforms, fiction stories I've written if you want to read those, as well as submitting your own stories, which there's a big button on the front page you click to do so. And those stories basically keep the podcast alive, to be honest with you. So, yeah.

All that said, friends, I do hope that I see you again here very soon. Until then, remember that you are loved, that you are valid, that you are important. You're the best you that you can be. Don't forget it. And until next time, much love, and sleep well.