While dreams are chalked up to wild brain activity in the middle of the night, the line between dream and reality was blurred for these Redditors.

Message From The Other Side

"My siblings and I all had the same dream on the same night a year ago. It was exactly one year after my mum died and we all had a dream about her and she was in the same place and was speaking to us. She reassured us that she was ok and she was with her mum and my dead siblings and that her dad is in the bad place."

"The next day we all realised we had the same dream, we even all independently drew a picture of the place we saw her and wrote down the name of the place it resembled. Most of my siblings took that as an actual message from my mum but my youngest sister and I like to believe that we have all developed some freaky hive mind low level telepathy lol."

– Queen_Omega

A Tragic Discovery

"I had a dream once about my high school best friend who had moved out of state and started a family. I hadn't seen her or spoken to her in at least 10 years and had never met her child, except seeing pictures/ posts on Facebook and commenting on them. In my dream I was walking down a street at night and out of nowhere her little girl appears next to me and I asked her, 'Where is your mama? Why are you by yourself?' I remember her taking me to some bushes near a random house on the street and finding my friend in bad shape (beaten up or something) on the ground and I remember running to the door of the random house screaming for help and to call the police. This is all I can recall from the dream but I think there may have been a little more."

"The next day, I wake up and think to myself, man that was weird. Maybe I dreamt of her because we had just spoken a little in comments of a Facebook post, I should send her a message. I go on about my day, go to work, get home later that day and sit on my couch and scroll through Facebook."

"BAM. 1000 posts— Rest In Peace, etc - All of them tagged my friend and her daughter. I thought WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F*CK!?!? At that point there was no information as to what had happened, so I thought it must have been a car accident or something. Over the course of the next few weeks to months, more and more information came out and it was NOT an accident. My friend and her sweet baby had been murdered by some animal (I won't refer to them as a person)."

"This happened about 5 years ago. I still remember the main parts of the dream vividly. I still am a little horrified that I had this dream that night. When it was happening possibly. I haven't been able to tell anyone else about it either because just thinking about it gives me chills."

– _bella_x0

About Dave

" I have to make a bit of a premise, when i was little the woman that came to clean my house (i'll call her Mary) while my parents where working was also my babysitter, usually after she ended up cleaning she would bring me to her house until my mom would come and pick me up. There during the year i knew her whole family, among these was her husband that i'll call Dave. So Dave was a pretty cool guy, just the average elder you would find in any rural town, he liked to drink wine with his friends at the bar, go hunting and he had a lot of good and interesting stories to tell me when i was a kid, and after all these years spent togheter he basically considered me as a grandson.

Now back when [the virus] hit for the first time in my country i had a dream one night where Mary was coming to my house to clean as every other week, but this time in my living room there was a closed black coffin. When i asked her what was in there she looked at me and said in a sad tone: 'Dave is inside there.' Now if that wasn't strange enough i remember waking up later that night and feeling a presence to the side of my bed, and i distinctly remember to have said while still being half asleep: 'Come on Dave let me get back to sleep.' Next morning when i woke my parents told me that Mary had called saying that Dave had passed that night due to [the virus] complication, to this day i still haven't told anyone about it and i am still a bit freaked out from the whole story. Also sorry for format and grammar but i'm on mobile and english isn't my first language."

– Uzzo_99

Preparing For Company

"One night I had a dream about my Grandpa (who had died almost 20 years prior). We were in his home, and he kept telling me 'we need to clean the house, we need to get the house ready.' When I asked him why, he just said 'she's coming home.'"

"My Grandma, his wife of 50 years, died the next day."

– dirtbikejess

A Late Brother's Encouragement

"My brother passed away in 2018 suddenly, about 3weeks after I was having surgery on my hand I was waking up from surgery and my brother was standing in the door way, I started freaking out and the nurses were thinking I was in pain but I couldn't tell them my dead brother is over there, he visited again when I was in labour last year he told me he was so proud of me and that I can do it because I'm strong like a viking... I was in labour on his birthday and gave birth at 1.12am.​"

– Dontbeacreepernow

These Redditors saw, or thought they saw, a person who was no longer part of this world.

Reassurance From Beyond

"When I was 9 or 10, it was a bad year. I was regularly physically and emotionally abused. But that year, I was sexually abused. On top of all that, I started having serious mental health issues. Well, when things were at their absolute worst, I started having dreams of this blonde lady telling me to hold on. That things would get better. It was so comforting and peaceful and continued as long as the extreme abuse continued. I didn't know who she was, I just figured I imagined her. Well, things finally simmer down, and the dreams stop. About a year later, mom was going through old photo albums, and my blood freezes. I see the blonde woman from my dreams. I ask who she is. Turns out, it was an aunt I had who died shortly before I was born."

– Tenebrousgent

The Not-So-Absent Worker

"Working as night security for a small office at a sanitation plant. Building was a single entrance and you had to check in at the security station to get in or out. A worker shows up and checks in saying he needs to take care of a few things and grab some stuff. So I check in his ID and flip a few lights for him then go back about my business."

"Fast forward a few hours and my shift is about to end, I still haven't seen the guy come back. So I go patrol the building to find him and literally can't find him anywhere. He's not in any of the areas I turned lights on for him, no other lights are on, and he's not in any other rooms. I stop by security to see if we just missed each other and he's trying to leave, but nobody is there. I do a second patrol and still no signs. At this point I went to check cameras to see where he went, but he's not on a single camera except the one covering the entrance and security station. He turns down a hallway and never shows up on the next camera down said hall. At this point I logged it as an incident, and GTFO right as the relief shift showed up."

"Next day my boss calls me and says that worker had been on vacation out of state for several days, and wouldn't return for several more. Nobody could offer any explanation to what happened."

– DuneManta

People Share Their Best 'Whoa, It Worked' Moments | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

The Hitchhiker

"When I was going to my families home I got in a suv going down the road. This was in Bangladesh at the time and after taking the suv the next two hours would be a highway going down a forest. I was sitting shotgun and along the highway their was an old man walking down the highway. He was hitch hiking and the driver decided to pick him up. He insisted on sitting in my seat and obliged as he was an older man."

"About an hour down the drive our car collided with a bus and the shot gun seat was mangled up. We all got out and we looked around but we couldn't find the old man that insisted on taking my seat anywhere."

"Stories like these aren't rare but I didn't believe them. We all know the man sat in my seat and we all saw him. But he was nowhere to be found."

– Leondas04

These Redditors were haunted by memories of bizarre and poignant cases that defied explanation.

The Stairwell Guardian

"When I was a kid (about 10-12ish) I was carrying a load of laundry upstairs home alone while mom was out doing errands. We have this weird carpet runner over our hard wood stairs that's only really attached at the top of the flight but otherwise not fitted or secured to each individual stair, so naturally I step on an air bubble of carpet with my vision obscured by the laundry and fall backwards while bear hugging a bunch of blankets."

"I specifically remember thinking "welp, guess I'm about to die" while almost airborne with just my big toe left on the carpet when I felt two hands, one on either side of my shoulder blades, give me a firm shove that launched me back up on the step and diagonally against the stair rail. I assumed mom somehow silently came back early without announcing herself and turned around to thank her while still clinging to the railing, but no one was there. I scurried upstairs to put my things down while calling her name and walked the house afterwards to check if any doors were unlocked or if her car was there. I finally resorted to calling her cell where she told me she was hitting up a few more stores. It still feels like there's a presence on that stairwell- like someone's watching but in a protective way rather than sinisterly."

– blickyjayy

The Stairwell Demon

"Well when I was around 6 years old I was walking down the stairs no one was behind me and all of a sudden I remember getting chills then feeling a faint hand on my shoulder before I got basically pushed down the stairs, I was alright a few cuts and bruises nothing serious but I still remember the feeling of the invisible hand on my shoulder, it haunts me."

– x_oblivious_x

Unidentified Hovering Object

"I was home alone in high school. It looked like car headlights where shining through our kitchen door which didn't make sense because it was next to a field. I looked out the kitchen door and the lights where coming from about 50 feet off the ground. It was a row of 3 white lights and 1 red light. I opened the door and there was complete silence and the whole field was lit up. I closed the door quickly, turned around and it was gone."

– mrserinisyourenasty

All Dogs Go To Heaven...And Make Periodic Visits

"I was about 15 and trying to sleep but having an asthma attack. Late in the night I started hearing a rhythmic breathing from the floor next to the bed. It wasn't scary, more comforting. And it wasn't me, because my breathing sounded way more f'ked up than that. It helped me calm down and get to sleep, even though I was still sick (I was able to get my hands on an inhaler in the morning). At the time I thought it was a friendly ghost. I later rationalized that maybe I was hearing a family member through the heating ducts."

"What I realized years later, when I had a dog, was that it had sounded exactly like a big dog sleeping next to the bed. So now I'm 50/50 on whether a ghost dog came to visit me, or my own dog time traveled back about ten years before she was born to comfort me."

– greeneyedwench

Owl Ally

"Super minor compared to many in this thread."

"Night before thanksgiving 3 years ago I was across the country at my parents, driving back to theirs with my now-wife from a friends house. As we draw near, there is some type of bundle in the middle of the road. I stopped and pulled off to move it, and it turned out to be a barred owl that got clipped by a car. Long story short I spend the rest of that night getting the owl into a puppy cage, gave it some food and water, and the next day dropped it off at a wildlife rescue center."

"I got home the next week, all the way across the country (New Jersey to Oregon). I stepped outside and there was a barred owl sitting on my fence watching me. It was gone by the time I got back. But now I know I'm straight with all owls."

– abxytg

Missed Call

"My buddy and I were playing tennis one night at some courts by my house. Lights usually went out at 11, but for whatever reason that night they went off at a weird time, like 10:43. Whatever, that was weird, we collected our stuff and started walking to my car about 500 feet from the courts. My buddy's mom pulls up right as we're getting to my car and goes "Where the hell have you been? I called your cell and some guy was just laughing, it didn't sound like you". It was then my buddy realized he didn't have his phone on him. He told his mom to call his cell again and we could see it light up in the middle of the court we were playing on (by the net, but still definitely in between the single lines, not at all where we kept the rest of our stuff). He goes and gets it and only has the one missed call from his mom, the one she just made. He asked if she called the right number and her call log showed 3 calls to his phone all that night. We can't explain why the cell was on the court or what happened with the calls or what happened with the lights. It was surreal."

– dgrantschmidt

An Invisible Reunion

"The only way I can explain this one is 'wishful thinking.'"

"My mom and dad were co-dependent, and they liked it that way. They didn't want other people (other than the kids). They were completely happy to be just wrapped up in each other. My dad died the day before his birthday in a hospice centre. Afterwards, it was like he was still home. His touch lamp beside his recliner would go on by itself. The recliner would rock like someone was getting in it. And sometimes, my mom or my sister would hear my dad saying, 'Honey, fix me a cold drink?' That was exactly how he'd ask my mom to fill up his massive mug with Sprite over ice."

"My mother died less than a year and a half later. After my mother died, there was never another sign of either of them being there. They've been gone now for close to 14 years now."

– ClothDiaperAddicts

Not Invited

"This didn't happen to me, but a very nice old man and his wife used to live a few streets over from us. Well she got very sick and his son flew in to help watch and care for her. A few weeks later she moved to hospice and later died. The night she died her husband and son drive home and they were talking about what to do for the funeral and the husband asked, 'Do you think she'd want (some person) to attend' and they both said they heard the dead mom/wife in the back seat say 'no thank you.'"

– _________FU_________

The stories concerning the deaths of the elderly or those gone too soon resonate with us the most because we want to believe we still have a connection with them.

Maybe that's why they visit us in our dreams, either to give us a heads up indicating it's their time to go or to check up on us long after they've left this world.

I gladly welcome a presence that brings me comfort.

However, if there really is a presence that pushes people down the stairs, I'm taking the elevator.