Our world is such a strange place, right? So many odd things happen to people every day, and we don't have a way to explain them. And what's probably even more frustrating is that often there's not only no way to explain them but no way to prove that they even happened and it wasn't just a figment of your imagination.
So, today, let's dive into a list of stories about things people experienced or saw but have no proof for. And let's just say -- these stories range from simply silly accidents to rather eerie stuff.
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I had been hit by my husband.
I was terrified to leave him.
I was driving alone at night and asked out loud, “will I be happy if I leave him?”
As SOON AS I SAID THAT, a bright white object streaked across the sky. I’ve seen falling stars, this was likely a meteor/ite or something. It popped into existence out of seemingly nowhere, arced across the sky, then disappeared.
I had to pull over to the shoulder of the deserted road.
“ARE YOU F*****G KIDDING ME?” I said out loud.
I looked up online to see if anyone saw anything, but I couldn’t find any mention of a meteor shower or anything (I don’t know the date this happened).
I left him within weeks of this event and it was the most terrifyingly brave and best thing I’ve ever done.
I am happy now, in love, and I love myself.
My husband died suddenly in 2016. I woke one night and he was sitting on the foot of our bed watching me. I wasn’t afraid and he looked peaceful. He faded after awhile and was gone. We had been together 46 years. Yes I believe in spirits and I think he was letting me know it was ok. Don’t care what naysayers claim.
A week after my dad died I saw him sitting in his chair in the day smiling at me. I was so happy to see him but I dont know if I hallucinated him due to emotional stress and grief or it was real. About 6 months later I felt his presence and asked him to turn on the light which it did straight away. Maybe there was a reason but it just felt so strange like he was there. Never been afraid of death since.
Since today's topic is sightings with barely any proof, of course, we have to talk about UFOs.
UFOs stands for unidentified flying objects. To say it in a little more complicated way, it’s any aerial object unidentifiable to the observer. There’s quite an extensive list of various UFO sightings. For example, this majestic Google Arts & Culture slideshow.
As one example, we can take a report from Sweden in 1946, when Gösta Karlsson reported seeing a flying saucer and its alien passengers land in the woods. Apparently, this sighting was so memorable for Sweden that there’s now a concrete model of the spacecraft standing at the site.
A jaguarundi in my small town in west(ish) Texas.
I was maybe 11, and walking home from the park through a trail in the woods, and passed a little neighborhood pond. It was a drought year so there was like no water anywhere, but this pond was always full (probably a spring come to think of it). I came around a bend and startled this WEIRD tan cat having a drink. I thought it was a a mountain lion at first, but it was really small (think bobcat or maincoon) and had the silliest little ears and an extra long tail. I remember laughing about its weird little ears the whole way home.
I told my mom I saw a mountain lion with teeny ears and she like scolded me for lying?? I was so pissed and just kind of ignored it until years later when I saw one at a zoo.
IT WAS THE MYSTERY CAT. 100% a jaguarundi which I now know live in Texas. I wish my mom had asked more questions so we could have reported it to whatever wildlife experts would have wanted to know it’s there, since they haven’t been seen in Texas since 86 supposedly. The habitat makes sense too because it’s like the thorniest, scrubbiest, underbrush in the world. Someone had a cut a path to make it easier to walk to the park, but it was basically impenetrable juniper and mesquite on either side.
Was playing outside with my older brother and saw him dash across the street. I was about to do the same until someone snatched me by shirt and a large white chevy van blew by in front of me. My big brother had never crossed the street and it was him holding me by the shirt.
I've had a similar experience but I was the big brother, and I might have slightly clothes lined my sister...
Whilst heading home on a late night flight working as cabin crew. I went in the flight deck because all the passengers were sleeping and we saw St Elmos fire on the nose of the aircraft. Captain said it was really rare because its usually associated with volcanic ash. One of the coolest things I've seen.
The sightings became more frequent and more popular after the development of rocketry after World War II. The first famous UFO sighting happened back in 1947 when businessman Kenneth Arnold said he saw a group of nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while he was flying in his small plane.
The man said that the objects moved “like saucers skipping on water,” but later, the reporting newspaper mistakenly said the objects were saucer-shaped. This was how the term flying saucer was born.
Not long before an overseas flight I couldn’t find my passport anywhere. Usually kept it in a very small box with other important documents- birth certificate kids passport. Vaguely remembered my young son looking at my passport stamps months before- figured it was stashed behind a sofa or something so tore the whole house apart looking for it. Partner helped, he also checked the document box. It was just nowhere.
Then I remembered the St Anthony prayer, (a story I’d read on reddit that people claimed worked when you’ve lost objects) so I said it aloud three times, st Anthony, st Anthony please come around my passport needs to be found. Went to sleep, prepared to try and get an emergency passport next morning.
Well here’s the thing, I dreamt about the prayer, and the documents box, over and over all night. So when I woke up I went straight to the box (which you needed a chair to reach and was kept high enough my son couldn’t access) and there it was. My passport.
Absolutely cannot explain this. There’s no logical explanation but when I’ve told someone before they said but it must have been in there. It 100 percent was not in the box. My partner was probably more freaked out than me. It was also sitting right where it should have been all along with the 10 or so other things in there. It definitely wouldn’t have been missed.
Weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.
I saw a penguin In California (few hours from SF). I was walking around in the middle of the day with a friend, and we see it near the beach. Poor thing shaking and just standing there. I called animal control and they didn’t believe me. They kept saying “are you sure it’s a penguin??” and “is this some kind of prank??” After a few mins on the phone with them I was like “yeah I’m standing f*****g 5 feet away from it, it’s definitely a penguin.”.
The coolest shooting star ever. It lasted a very long time, like a solid 8-10 seconds. It looked like it was "spraying" sparkles out behind it, and the trail changed colors a few times, from red, to green, to purple, etc.
Seen dozens of shooting stars. Never seen one remotely like that.
Soon, similar sightings increased, and in 1948, the U.S. Air Force began an investigation of them -- a Project Sign. Later, it was replaced by Project Grudge, which was replaced by Project Blue Book.
The last project compiled reports of more than 12,000 sightings and classified them into several categories.
- Identified: Known astronomical, atmospheric, or artificial phenomena;
- Unidentified: Events with insufficient information to make an identification.
This and many other investigations throughout UFO history proved that most of these objects are something explainable -- usually, it’s astronomical phenomena or something like space technology. The unknown is commonly caused by observers' unreliability and poor observing and capturing conditions.
And while the stories in this list aren't just UFO sightings, they're still something unbelievable that happened to people, and they're fascinating to read about. So, let's dig into these stories and upvote the ones you think are the most unexpected!
Ball lighting, watched it for a solid minute then it disappeared. It fascinated me out so much I didn’t even think about grabbing my phone.
Good. Some moments you need to record with your eyes only, not an electronic device.
Dark, almost moonless night. In back paddock with neighbour, trying to find an ewe that had abandoned its newly-born lamb. Neighbour suddenly lifts rifle, and shoots at fox running straight towards us.
This farmer had *never* missed in the ten or so years we’d known each other.
Imagine my astonishment when the fox continued toward us. Imagine my even bigger astonishment as it seemed to split in half, and **two** foxes ran either side of where we were standing.
*The damn things had been running side by side with only one eye open each.* Bullet went straight through the tiny gap between their two heads.
I saw a lady i worked with sneak into the walk-in cooler where i worked, so i opened the door for fun...and I'll never forget this.... she had just went to take a bite of a hard boiled egg, but when she saw me she pushed the whole egg into her mouth and swallowed it WHOLE. Then she said hi and acted like nothing happened. I still can hardly believe it.
I witnessed a squirrel actually tipping up a (presumably "empty") discarded can of 7up, using its 2 front paws, like it was drinking it. This was on the front lawn of my kids' HS shortly after lunch. It happened. Really!
My brother didn’t “accidentally” turn off the NES when I was about to beat his high score on Tetris.
I used to work at a haunted house as one of the actors. I actually hate acting and at the time hated haunted houses, but my friend wanted to do it but didn't have the courage to do the process alone. Being the good friend I am, I signed up too.
One night, I had to work a whole section by myself. I had to sit by myself in dim lighting for hours on end with horror music playing to create ambiance. There were a bunch of mannequins sitting in chairs, and I would sit among them to jump-scare the passers-by.
One night, there was a 30 minute lag where nobody came through. So imagine sitting in pure eerie darkness by yourself for that long. I have absolutely no proof that this happened at all---but as I was sitting among the mannequins, one of them turned their head to look back at me, then turned its head back to the original position. We could fairly argue that I was paranoid and made this up out of such paranoia---but that felt real as all f**k to me. I had to leave the set and go to the break room for a while. I saw something else peculiar in a different room a few days later. I feel like that space had bad energy, and I'm happy to say I won't be working there ever again.
I saw a naked dude in the forest while I was in the train with my buddy. He did not believe me but I'm 100% sure.
When I was 11, I spent the night with a friend whose grandpa worked at the zoo. The next morning we went with him to his early morning shift at the zoo, and so her and I got to kind of run around the zoo before anything was open and the animals are just kind of waking up. we were behind the rhinoceros habitat and we were looking through these knot-holes in the fence, kind of spying on the rhinoceros for some reason. There was a really big log in their habitat, and the big (male?) rhino ran up to the log and jumped up so that his two front feet were on the log. And then another rhino started making weird noises at him, like cheering him on, and he started rolling that log while his two front feet were still on it and walking on his back feet. It was like a circus trick or something, but they were acting that way by themselves. That is the only time in my life I’ve ever spied on a rhino, and it really paid off.
In the summer sometime around 2005, in a suburb of Washington DC in northern Virginia. A friend and I were driving on a small 2 lane road with trees on either side. We saw a monkey drop from the trees and jump to the other side of the road. It then jumped and grabbed a low hanging branch and swung back into the trees. I couldn’t f*****g believe it and my friend was as equally shocked.
Driving down the road at 1ish am at night middle of the road see a whiteish greyish figure jump down from gum tree branch way high up 10-12 meters no way a normal person could do that and then it ran across the road and disappeared. Freaking yowies they are real.
I was about 7 or 8, and with one of my friends. We were both looking at the sky together one night, and the two of us swear over our lives we saw a shadow of Santa's sleigh and reindeer on the moon. Absolutely nobody believes us when we tell the story, even the people who were there as well.
While walking through the parking lot from my office to my car one Summer afternoon, I had this sudden vision that I was looking down from a height of several hundred yards over the parking lot and looking around the area from above. I could see myself walking toward my car, I saw cars driving down the surrounding roads, and I could see people walking through the parking lots of surrounding businesses and stores. Then the vision went away as I continued to walk to my car. It kinda shook me, so I looked around and saw the same people and cars I saw from above (that I could see within my field of view.) This has happened twice in two different locations.
I saw a man in a chicken costume on the London Underground get on the train, do a backflip just to the casually walk out of the train again at the same stop like nothing happened.
1981. Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota. (My memory's foggy - so excuse weirdness in the details.)
I'm walking across the athletic field and Retreat followed by the National Anthem is played (4 or 430, I don't remember) like it's done every day. So, like we are ordered, I stop and stand at attention with hand on heart.
North Dakota is swarming with Prairie Dogs and this field was no exception. Anyway, I become aware that a Prairie Dog has emerged from its burrow and is standing next to me, close enough to touch. I have no explanation and no satisfying theories for what happened next: the little guy stands at attention and puts his paw on his chest. We stood there for a minute or so until the music stopped.
When it did, he looked directly at me, gave a cheery chirp, and dived into his burrow.
Thanks for the question, OP! I haven't thought about this in years. It's still probably the most adorable weird thing I've ever witnessed.
Oh, PS - I checked but never him again.
The prairie dog probably wondered why humans was doing this weird thing, and did it himself to find out.
A ghost. I was in middle school. We were pulling stuff out of an abandoned auditorium the school used as a storage shed. She was standing in front of the stage. She was clearly Native American. Young. Maybe in her twenties. She was clear as day standing 10 feet in front of me and PISSED. She opened her mouth as if to scream but nothing came out. She came walking towards us with this horrible grimace and limp, as if she were dragging her leg. We booked it. There were three of us who saw her, but no one believed us. I got detention for spreading rumors. They’ve torn the building down now.
I’m pretty sure i rang up John C. Reilly at my old bookstore job once. this was in illinois and he was buying a few CDs. he was wearing sunglasses the whole time and was definitely being low key. i didn’t wanna just straight up ask him if he was JCR but i wanted to say something cus i really like him! so i was like, “hey, has anyone ever told you you look like someone famous?” and he was quickly like, nope!! and went on his way. i’m POSITIVE it was him but none of my other coworkers even noticed him so no one believed me 😢.
When I was a kid I went outside to call my brother home. He was already running like mad across the road towards home and above him was a circular display of lights. They disappeared quickly.
I don’t believe in Aliens and UFOs and all that s**t but it definitely happened and I can’t explain it.
I saw a rare mongolian wolf while i was on a trek and no one f*****g believed me not even the guides. i was coming over a hill and it was right in front of me then ran off. still pissed that no one believed me :(.
Ignore the haters you got to see a beautiful rare thing you might want to talk to a conservationists if it was thought to be extinct. They have had a few pop back up.
I grew up in the north of the UK, and there were three big coal fired power stations along the river that flowed through my town. The nearest was probably about 3 miles away and it was visible from most of the town as it's a very flat area
I was in the local park drinking with my buddy at about 1am as we'd done many times, and suddenly there was a huge bright light from the direction of the power station - it was a bluey artificial light, but literally turning half the sky to day.
We looked over at the source and it was from behind the power station... which was inexplicably WAY WAY closer than it should be - like only a few hundred yards away, towering over the park and backlit with this crazy bright light. It was so close I remember tilting my head back to look up at the main chimneys. Neither myself or my buddy were fazed by it at the time though, it sounds weird but it somehow just seemed normal.
The light faded after about ten seconds and when our eyes adjusted everything was back to how it usually is - the red navigation lights on top of the station towers twinkling in the distance.
We didn't even chat about it that night other than casually mention the light, drink a bit more and go home - again it seemed perfectly normal - but the next day we were both like DUDE WHAT THE AF HAPPENED LAST NIGHT?!? I'd get weird goosebumps just thinking about it for months afterwards.
I've never seen anything like that before or since.
When I was a teenager, my friends and I snuck on to the roof of this huge building that looks like the Taj Mahal, called the Hadji shrine. We used to do this thing where we would all tell our parents we were staying at the others houses, and we’d go camp out in weird places and get into trouble. Anyways we climbed down off the roof to go do whatever and as we were coming around the corner of the building we heard this enormous whooshing sound, like someone swinging a huge broom really fast. When we came around to the other side we saw what looked like a bat with a 6 foot wingspan flapping around one of the light poles in the parking lot. We just stood there in awe watching until it flew away into the night about 10 seconds later. I always assumed it was an owl that was obscured by the bright light, we could really only see its silhouette. But it turned and performed maneuvers that looked very bat-like. Absolutely insane to think about a bat that big.
Depends on where you live, but some bats can have wingspans that big.
When I was around 7 or 8 my mum picked me up from school because it was raining heavily. On our way home we passed a park that I always took a shortcut through on my way home. I was looking down playing my Gameboy when a huge crack of Thunder scared me. I jumped and looked out the window and saw a white horse bolting through the trees in the park. Right in the middle of town, I told my mum to look at the horse but when I looked at her and looked back I couldn't see the horse anymore.
Ever since then I've had a big soft spot for white horses, but none that I've ever seen have even come close to being as beautiful as the one in the park.
Note: this post originally had 45 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
One night many years ago I was taking my dog out and looked up. Saw two lights pass overhead very slowly. Watched them until they passed over the horizon. Turned out that I'd been up at just the right time to see the ISS and the shuttle Atlantis.
Nice! I took my little boy outside at dawn one morning to see the stars when it wasn't too dark, and just as we look up we saw a bright "satellite", which turned out to be the ISS. Not often visible in NZ at that time.
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My dad found rare orchids back in the '90s and he never told anyone where he found them. He died 15 years ago and my mom and I spent the summer visiting places that had been important to my dad. We were driving slowly down a very narrow dirt road and I looked into the forest on the side... and there they were. They are tiny, hardly visible and it was dumb luck that I saw them. We've been back every summer since then, except for the pandemic years when I couldn't travel to visit her.
I saw an UFO, as in aerial object unidentifiable to the observer. I was waiting for my train in the dark when I noticed a bright light in the sky. It moved very slowly from north southwards. I heard nothing in the quiet evening so I assumed it was far away, but suddenly it shot straight up very very fast and disappeared. I have no idea what it was.
I have seen something like that. Was on an RAF base, and my Sargeant saw it too. The radar guys at the tower didn't...
Load More Replies... One night many years ago I was taking my dog out and looked up. Saw two lights pass overhead very slowly. Watched them until they passed over the horizon. Turned out that I'd been up at just the right time to see the ISS and the shuttle Atlantis.
Nice! I took my little boy outside at dawn one morning to see the stars when it wasn't too dark, and just as we look up we saw a bright "satellite", which turned out to be the ISS. Not often visible in NZ at that time.
Load More Replies... My dad found rare orchids back in the '90s and he never told anyone where he found them. He died 15 years ago and my mom and I spent the summer visiting places that had been important to my dad. We were driving slowly down a very narrow dirt road and I looked into the forest on the side... and there they were. They are tiny, hardly visible and it was dumb luck that I saw them. We've been back every summer since then, except for the pandemic years when I couldn't travel to visit her.
I saw an UFO, as in aerial object unidentifiable to the observer. I was waiting for my train in the dark when I noticed a bright light in the sky. It moved very slowly from north southwards. I heard nothing in the quiet evening so I assumed it was far away, but suddenly it shot straight up very very fast and disappeared. I have no idea what it was.
I have seen something like that. Was on an RAF base, and my Sargeant saw it too. The radar guys at the tower didn't...
Load More Replies...