Some of My Most Bizarre Reader Submitted Reports

As a paranormal writer on a popular site like Mysterious Universe, I have been fortunate enough to come into contact with myriad people who have taken it upon themselves to come to me with their own experiences of the odd. Some of these are credible, some of them are obviously made-up nonsense, but they are almost always very strange and intriguing. Some of these reports I have been sent turn out to be weirder than most, those cases which I am not quite sure what to do with. Here are some of the strangest reader's reports I have received, in no particular order, delving into the realms of aliens, ghosts, demons, and other various oddness.

A Demon in the Closet

The witness here, who I will call “Karen” says she is a divorcee who lives alone in a modest home in Arizona, and that she had never experienced anything particularly paranormal at her place until one evening when things would really take off into the bizarre. It began with her waking at night to find the sheets thrown on the floor or articles of her nightwear removed. At first she believed that she had just done this in her sleep, despite the fact that she had never had instances of this ever happening before. Nevertheless, she thought that maybe it was because she had just gone through a divorce and had moved into that place a few months before, and that the adjustments in her life were taking their toll. However, things would graduate quickly to the strange.

After several weeks of these strange nighttime anomalies, she began waking in the middle of the night with potent, terrible nightmares in which she had been attacked by some sort of demonic entity. These seemed to be just bad dreams, but then she started waking up to find scratches or bruises on her body in places where she would have never been able to inflict on herself. Before long we would wake to the feeling of cold, scaly hands on her body which she could never see, but which would grab her with greater and greater force, at one time even supposedly pulling her out of her bed. Sometimes she would see what looked like a cat’s reflective eyes in the gloom, as well as a squatting shadow figure. Then it would get really strange.

On evening her closet door began glowing along the edges, as if there were a fire burning within, but there was no smoke. The glow got steadily brighter, and then the door flung open to reveal a hulking, humanoid shape, with an oversized head and extremely long arms that seemed to be clawed, the whole of it silhouetted by a nearly blinding red light coming from within the closet. As Karen stared at this mysterious entity in shock and horror, it then somehow was suddenly upon her. It hadn’t moved, it had just been in the closet one moment, and on top of her the next. The creature then tore at her clothing and started strangling her, and she had the impression that it was actually trying to rape her or kill her, but when she screamed out at the top of her lungs it was suddenly gone as if it had never been there at all. The closet door was still open, but there was no more red light emanating from within and the inside of the closet was undisturbed and completely normal. 

Apparently she would be attacked on several more occasions in the same way, but she was too afraid to tell anyone because she thought people would think she was crazy. According to her I was the first person she reached out to tell her strange story, and that whatever the thing was apparently did not want her to. She told me that every time she tried to type it out her computer would malfunction or the words would be deleted as she typed them. On one occasion she even says that her keyboard was flung across the room, and that all of this only happened when she tried to tell me her story. It actually took me quite a while to get it out of her, because she would just send bits and pieces. Sometimes her explanation of events was interspersed with nonsensical words, or more menacingly curse words like “Die,” “shit,” and others. She would claim that she had not typed those, but rather the entity had done it. I offered to arrange a phone call with her and the thought of this seemed to terrify her beyond reason and I was never able to get her to do this because she was convinced that the demon in her closet would kill her if she were to try. 

In the end, she told me that the attacks had continued and gotten more intense. She asked me for my advice and what can I really say? I advised to try and find an exorcist and to try and protect herself, but it was always hard to communicate with her because our correspondences would cut out or she would not reply due to what she claims was the work of the entity trying to sabotage her efforts to talk to me. The last time I heard from her she told me that she was very scared, and that she was moving out of that place and would update me later. That was the last time I ever heard from her. I am not sure if she was a delusional individual but she always seemed sincere and truly scared. Was this a hoax? If not what was going on here? Your guess is as good as mine. 

A Skinwalker in Nevada?

This report came to me a while back in response to an article I had written about my own strange experiences with the paranormal. It concerns a witness calling himself “Jay,” who similarly to my own experience was travelling through Nevada along a long stretch of lonely, dusty desert highway. At the time he says that evening was on its way, the sun beginning to dip lower over the horizon to paint the sky orange, purple, and pink. It would have been quite a beautiful sunset, a bit of tranquility along that long, monotonous drive, if it were not for a series of very strange events that was about to transpire. 

At one point he could see not far off the road what looked like a man hunched over and digging in the ground. It was sort of a weird sight, because this was a stretch of area that had no towns and nothing but a desolate moonscape of parched desert and low bushes for miles around, and there was no car parked anywhere nearby that this stranger could have come from. Jay was curious enough that he slowed down to get a better look, and it seems that it was then that the figure became aware of him and stood to face him. The figure was described as a man wearing a black, loose fitting robe of some kind hanging off a thin frame topped with a pale face and black, piercing eyes. In the fading light he looked quite spooky, and whoever he was seemed to be surprised and not a little irritated that he had company. Jay nevertheless asked him if he needed any help, and this was when things would go from odd to terrifying. Jay explains of what happened:

He was a weird looking guy, but it was still the middle of nowhere and so I pulled over to ask him if he needed any help. As I got close I could now see that his hands were caked with dirt, clods of it jammed up underneath these long, gnarly looking fingernails. It was obvious to me that he had been digging out there with his bare hands. No idea what for. The guy was just looking at me with these real black eyes, kind of like shark eyes. It was pretty unsettling and I was starting to think I should just move on but for some reason I still asked him if he was alright or needed any help. The guy then hissed at me, this horrible rattling hissing noise, and his lips drew up over these jagged, sharp teeth that looked like they were shiny and made of metal. Then I blinked in surprise and I shit you not, the guy was no longer there. In his place was a very large, snarling coyote, staring at me with those same black eyes.

Jay says he stepped on the gas and tore out of there as fast as he could, but the coyote chased him and was able to keep up with him even as his speed increased to 60, then 70, then 80 mph. At one point in this chase the coyote was suddenly gone, replaced by a huge hawk or eagle. This bird then swooped over the car, outrunning it even at that high speed, and circled back to fly right at the windshield, only swooping up to fly over at the last second just when Jay was sure it was going to make impact. He swerved and skidded to the side of the road to a stop, and he looked back to where the bird was. He says there was enough light left in the evening to see it come down to land and take a couple of hops towards him. It then within a split second morphed into a jackrabbit and tore off into the night. The witness got out of there as fast as he could and tells me that he wanted so badly to go see what that thing was digging at out there, but never got up the nerve. 

What was going on here? Was this some sort of supernatural creature, perhaps even a type of Native American entity from legend known as a Skinwalker, a sort of cursed, shapeshifting shaman? It is an especially spooky story for me because it apparently happened along the same highway where I had my own experience with some inexplicable pale-faced strangers, so is there some connection? What did he see out there? Did he really see anything out there at all or was he just pulling my leg? I have no idea. 

Strangers in the Woods

This account comes to me from a witness calling himself “Jack K,” who claims to be a hunter from the region of the Appalachian Mountains. He was very familiar with the land and had been hunting in the area for decades, and although he had seen a lot of strange things nothing could prepare him for what he was about to experience on this occasion. He says that it was a perfectly clear day and that he was on the trail of a big buck he was tracking. He was fairly off the beaten path, far from the nearest road or any hiking trails, so he was rather surprised when he heard laughter coming from ahead. It sounded like a child’s laugh, and although typically this would not have been particularly scary, it was kind of an eerie thing to hear out in the middle of the woods. 

He decided to see who was all the way out there in basically the middle of nowhere scaring off his deer, and so crept quietly towards the sound. Up ahead he could see through the trees into a sort of clearing, and that was where he saw a young girl and what appeared to be her father. The girl was laughing and running around as the man smiled. The two of them were so far from the roads and nearest town that Jack was puzzled as to how they had come here to play in that meadow, but this was the least of the weirdness. He would explain what happened next:

The girl was laughing and the man smiling and it was just like any other father and daughter out playing outside on a nice day. In fact, it would have been normal under any other circumstances except for the fact that we were out in the middle of goddam nowhere. Then the man sort of clapped his hands and made a sort of gesture for her to calm down and the girl stopped playing and stood in front of him. They seemed to have no idea I was there, and even when the man looked around, almost as if he was checking if anyone was around, I was hiding well enough to avoid being seen. Then he rose his hands up, palms up and made a gesture like “up” “up” and the girl started to float up off the ground. She was hovering in the air and let out a squeal of delight as she got higher and higher. The man then rose off the ground too, and the both of them just sort of levitated off until I couldn’t see them anymore. Suddenly I had forgotten about the buck and got the hell out of there.

It’s hard to know what to make of this one. Who was this man and the kid? Why could they fly? Had they flown out there to that clearing in the middle of nowhere to practice their magical abilities without being seen? Again, was this just a made-up tale to troll me? Who knows?

The Alien Tattoo

The witness here claims that she one night woke to sense a presence in the room with her. Waking up and adjusting her eyes, she noticed a trio of figures standing in her room, described as having short, thin bodies, oversized heads, and large, black slanted eyes. These entities approached her bed and one of them produced a tiny metal tube that shot out a thin beam of light right at her chest. It reminded her of a laser pointer, only this one immediately paralyzed her as soon as that beam hit her. She could not move any part of her body except her eyes, and she could merely watch on in terror and the aliens picked her up off the bed and pulled her towards a bright light that had appeared at the window. She then lost consciousness, and when she next woke up she was lying on a metal table of some kind in a bright room, with one of those beings hunched over her holding a similar device, only this time it was moving the laser around over her arm. As it did whatever it was doing, it explained to her telepathically that she was important to them, although it did not explain why, and that they were going to mark her and keep an eye on her. She then lost consciousness once again.

She woke up again, this time in her own bed, and at first she thought it had to have all been a bad dream. She eventually went back to sleep, and the next day she was shocked to find something very strange on her arm where the entity had been moving around his laser pointer thing around. It was not a burn, or a scar, but rather appeared to be some kind of tattoo, obviously intentionally etched into her skin in an elaborate design that looked like “a cross between a barcode and one of those tribal tattoos that used to be so popular.” She said that there were certain mysterious strangers who would stare at her tattoo on occasion, and that it sometimes had the power to apparently hypnotize those who looked at it, but I never got much more information about it. I’ve heard a lot of stories of aliens leaving scars or implants, but this was the first time I’d ever heard of an alien tattoo. Strange, indeed.

A Strange Encounter in Afghanistan

Another account that most certainly belongs here is one given by a commenter on another article of mine on mysteries in the war in the Middle East. It is an account that seems hard to really categorize, but seeming to deal with ghosts, demons, or some other supernatural beings. The commenter, Jerry Aberdeen, related a truly bizarre experience that happened to him when he was stationed in Mosul, Ninewah Province in 2004, and it is so intriguing and fitting that I felt compelled to share it here. Jerry Aberdeen explains his very weird story thus:

I was attached to 2/3 INF 3 SBCT at FOB Patriot. A call went out on the radio that FOB Diamondback (the airfield) was under attack. Everyone on every FOB from, Courage, Blickenstaff, Patriot and Marez jumped into the closest vehicle and headed to the airfield to counter the attack. I was in a vehicle with some other infantry guys, an engineer and a PsyOps guy. When we got to the airfield we saw some dudes trying to climb over the wall. The gunner opened up on them and the rest of us took up a position in a ditch on the other side of the road and opened fire. There were three of us side by side, the engineer, the PsyOps guys and myself. We fired and one guy and he dropped from the top of the wall (hard to tell who actually shot him). Right after he fell there was stream of black smoke coming out of him. The engineer made that comment that he must have been wearing a suicide vest and it malfunctioned. A few seconds later the black smoke grew larger and started to take a human looking form. What happened next all three of us saw and there was no doubt. The now fully materialized black smoke was standing upright and now had red smoky glowing eyes and a weird looking mouth. The damn thing actually smiled at us and turned to, sort of run but it just dissipated after it took a few steps. Very hard to describe how it all happened. All three of us just looked at each other wide eyed for a second or two. After it was all over we only spoke about once then never again.

I am not sure what to make of it, but it is very strange.

The Men in Black in Japan?

Some really strange encounters I was told by a Japanese UFO blogger who shall remain anonymous, I’ll call him “Taro,” who came to me with some very weird tales of what seem to be the Men in Black in Japan. Taro told me of one case of another blogger who had been releasing some very clear photos of a UFO sighting and was immediately bombarded by anonymous comments demanding that the pictures be taken down. There was never any identification of the commenter, and the messages seemed to come under different screen names with different IP addresses. In every instance, the blogger refused the demands, even after being met with legal threats that seemed to be purely empty bluffs.

This blogger, who we will call “Kenji,” apparently began receiving more and more of these escalatingly ominous comments, to the point where he closed the comments section down and thought that would be the end of it, yet things would just get even odder. One night, Kenji claims that he was out having a drink alone at a local izakaya, which is a kind of drinking establishment popular in Japan where one can order drinks and various food items in a casual atmosphere. Kenji was sitting in a zashiki area, meaning a tatami sitting room where one sits on the floor at a low table, with other tables laid out nearby. The clientele of this particular izakaya was typically business men and university students, but on this evening a rather strange group of individuals would come in to sit at the next table over from Kenji.

According to the witness there were three of them, all men and all of them taller than the typical Japanese, with long, lanky limbs and very long fingers. They were wearing very dark grey, almost black suits which seemed to fit awkwardly and sort of hang off of their thin frames, perhaps too big for them, and their neckties seemed to be crooked and askew. Indeed their general appearance seemed to be somewhat disheveled. When they were seated Kenji could see that they were all strikingly pale, with features that did not seem to be totally Japanese. Indeed, he described them as looking like what Japanese call “half” (ハーフ), a word used to denote those of mixed ancestry, and they seemed to have a mix of Japanese and perhaps European features, although Kenji says they had a sort of Middle Eastern appearance to them as well. All of them had smooth skin that was extremely pale, almost translucent, to the point where it made them look rather sickly.

This group sat down and ordered their drinks, and it was noted that they spoke Japanese with a noticeable accent of some kind, although Kenji could not quite place what it might be. Amongst themselves they seemed to not talk at all, rather just sitting there looking quite run-down and exhausted. Kenji found he could scarcely keep from looking over at them, so conspicuous were they, and he explained that their movements were rather strange as well. He would say (translated as best I can from the Japanese):

They moved in a weird way. I can’t quite explain it. When they moved it was sort of insect-like. Does that make any sense? I can’t really explain why I had that impression, but that’s what their movements reminded me of, insects. It was not strange enough to attract so much suspicion from others I guess, but when they moved and looked about I had that very stubborn impression that it all seemed very insectoid to me.

The group ordered their drinks but did not seem to really touch them as they sat in silence, even as others in the tatami room drank and talked boisterously. One of them stirred the drink with his finger only to withdraw it and stare at it. Another took a sip but seemed to grimace at the taste, after which he did not take another. At one point one of them fumbled with what seemed to be a smartphone, but did not seem to be able to operate it well and dropped it to the table to leave it lie. By this time Kenji was getting the feeling that he was not the only one stealing looks in their direction, but that they were taking peeks at him as well. It was a very heavy feeling of being watched by them, although whenever he looked their way they seemed to be ignoring him.

All of this was starting to make Kenji uneasy, and he was thinking that perhaps he would ask for the bill, when the one sitting closest to him turned to make conversation by mentioning how cold it had been that day, which was odd considering that this was summer and it had actually been a rather hot day. Keji just nodded and went along with it, noticing that indeed the man had that odd, unidentifiable accent. The stranger then asked him what he did for a living, to which Kenji replied that he was a blogger. The stranger asked what kind of blog, and perhaps unwisely Kenji told them the truth, that he wrote about unexplained phenomena and UFOs, and the stranger allegedly bluntly replied “probably not a lot of money in that, eh?” Kenji ignored it, asked them what they did, and the man said “We’re just on business, passing through.” During this whole exchange the other two looked on with blank expressions on their faces, not drinking and not doing much of anything except staring and occasionally fidgeting with their unused chopsticks in that weird insect way. One of them had begun to incessantly rap a finger against his glass to issue an off-kilter clinking.

The whole thing was unnerving enough that Kenji decided it was better to get going. He had started to get an inexplicable sense of dread from this group of odd strangers, although he could not really understand why they should feel so threatening. It was just a feeling, but a pervasive one that was ever creeping up on him. As Kenji got up to leave, the man offered to buy him a drink and urged him to stay there rather than go home and write more “UFO stuff,” to which the whole table sort of let out a disturbing chuckle. Kenji would say:

They really did not want me to leave. They said we should all chat and that they would buy me some drinks. The main guy joked that I was just going to write about UFOs at home anyway, so I might as well stay out and unwind. Then they all laughed in a way that, well, it sounded like they were just faking a laugh, like they didn’t even really understand what a laugh was. It also sounded fairly threatening, It all had a very disturbing effect on me. I got the worst feeling from that group.

Interestingly, as Kenji was paying his bill at the cash register at the front of the izakaya, he noticed that the group of strangers was also getting up to leave, their drinks still full to the brim. He hastily got out of there and onto his train home, all the time looking around expecting them to be following him or riding the train with him. In this case he seemed to be alone, and it is unclear if he received any other visits from these people. I am not even sure if he ended up taking those UFO photos down after all.

Taro relates another tale of a Japanese author on UFOs who had his own experience with the Men in Black, this time at a hot spring resort. The witness in this case, let’s call him “Hideo,” was taking a vacation at one of the many hot springs resorts found throughout Japan, and had just entered one of the hot springs rooms for a relaxing bath. It was rather late in the evening and he was practically the only one there. As he sat down in the steaming water to relax for a soak, a pair of men entered who looked somewhat Asian, but also somewhat foreign. Hideo assumed that they were not Japanese, as they came into the hot springs wearing towels around their waists, when the Japanese tend to go in completely nude, regardless of how many other people may be using the bath. Both of the men were described as being surprisingly thin and looking almost malnourished, with their ribs clearly jutting out from alabaster pale skin.

Although there were other open baths around the room with no one in them, this pair of strangers chose to enter the one that Hideo was in, which was not a breach of any etiquette but still somewhat annoying nonetheless. This would soon turn to surprise when Hideo fleetingly noticed something very bizarre as one of the men entered the bath. Although he only had a momentary glimpse, he claims that as one of the men removed his towel to quickly sink into the bath, he very briefly could see that it appeared the man had no discernible genitalia, but rather just smooth skin where they should have been. The other man’s couldn’t be seen, as he entered the bath with the towel still attached and then removed his soaking wet towel after getting in to set it down next to the bath with a wet smack, which was a very strange way of entering a hot spring in Japan.

Startled by what he thought he had seen, Hideo was struggling to rationalize it in his mind, thinking he must have just been imagining things. The two men then laid back for a moment and Hideo would make the observation that they both looked rather old, yet young at the same time, an impression which even he was at a loss to adequately explain, especially as their complexions seemed to be totally smooth and free of wrinkles. At this point they had not said a single word to each other. After a few minutes of awkwardness, one of the men looked to Hideo and smiled a crooked smile before trying to make small talk, which quickly took a turn for the sinister.

According to the witness, the stranger at one point suddenly proclaimed “You are an author, aren’t you? I know your work. You write about UFOs, do you not?” It was a sudden thing to say, and jarring considering that Hideo was not particularly well-known and there seemed to be no way anyone could have known who he was just by looking at him, in addition to the fact that it seemed rather beyond coincidence that anyone who would know who he was would be sitting in a hot spring bath with him at that moment. The other man in the meantime was apparently just sitting there spacing out, seemingly uncomfortable to be there. Hideo felt a strong sense of jeopardy at that point, even though the stranger had done nothing particularly intimidating yet other than that brief glimpse of a perfectly smooth pubic region, but it was enough that Hideo felt it was in his best interest to get out of there. He excused himself and exited the bath, and the next morning at the resort’s breakfast he had an eye out for the two men but could not see them anywhere.

These are all truly strange cases that really stretch the limits of the odd. I don't know how true any of them are and I don't endorse them as necessarily real. I merely present them to you and let you come to your own conclusions.