Let me be the first to say I am skeptical about the supernatural. Though as I get older (oddly enough) it seems to be more and more likely.

As I read stories about other people's interactions and experiences with the paranormal realm, I start to realize there are absolutely things living among us that cannot be explained.

These are some of the stories that really sent me for a loop. I like to think of myself as a logical thinker with a good grasp on reality, but these stories had me dousing my house in salt to keep the demons out!

1. The Rocking Horse

One night, when I was maybe 10-12, I had trouble falling asleep. My bedroom was the entire top floor of our house with my bed and such being on the left side and storage closets and a play area being on the right. I was lying in bed when I heard a noise from the other side of the room and see a rocking horse begin to rock. It was sitting just outside one of the storage closet doors. It proceeded to rock its way halfway across the room and stopped dead under the ceiling light. At this point I was freaking out and just buried my head under my blankets and never peeked out again until morning.

It was all confirmed to not be a dream as the rocking horse was still in the middle of my room when I woke up. Furthermore, I got a stern reprimand from my parents for being up out of bed playing with my toys well past my bedtime. Their bedroom was directly below the storage closet/play area and had heard the creaking of the rocking horse shuffling across the room.

(h/t HuffPo)

2. Ghost Puppy

My husband's family have always told me about their house being haunted. I have never ever once believed any of it and just wrote it off as them being superstitious. Well, a few months back, me, my husband, and my daughter spent the night at my in-laws'. I slept in my sister-in-law's room with my daughter, and my husband and his sister ended up crashing in the living room after staying up watching TV.

Late at night I heard the door open and heard little puppy feet walking in and around the room. I felt my sister-in-law's puppy tug at the blanket and heard it scratch the bed trying to jump up. I pulled the blanket away and heard him leave. I then texted my husband to come and take the dog outside because I didn't want it to jump on the bed and get scared or have my daughter be scared.

I heard my husband walk back and forth down the hallway and then outside. He came back into the room to tell me it was already outside. I thought he was messing with me so I rolled my eyes and fell back asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, he told me about turning off lights and finding them turned back on. I always believe there is a logical explanation for everything, but I just haven't found anything that makes more sense than the house ghost finally accepted me to the family enough to haunt me too.

(h/t Buzzfeed)

3. What Tricycle?

I was driving home from work one night when I see a little girl on a tricycle riding across the street and into some woods that drop off into a creek. I brake and skid to avoid her and walk to where I thought she fell.

I see no one and a cop pulls up to ask me what I am doing. I tell him he was the person I needed (I was still in my security uniform) and tell him that I saw a little girl riding her tricycle across the street heading into that area where it dropped off.

He then tells me right away that I see what some other drivers here see. It was more than 40 years ago a child was killed riding her tricycle across that section of road. Others have seen her multiple times. Sometimes walking other times on her tricycle.

After some construction brought change to that section of road with expansions and barriers the sightings all ceased.

(h/t The Line Up)

4. Funny Papa

My grandfather died last year sometime when my son was maybe a year old. We had dinner with the whole family every Friday night so my son had seen him several times. My grandfather was a very quiet, proud man, but when he thought he was alone or unseen he would make silly faces at my son to get a laugh. A couple nights after his funeral my son (who liked to crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night) started just laughing uncontrollably at like 2 am.

So I get out of bed to see what's going on, and find my son sitting in the middle of the living room, in the dark, laughing. I say "hey buddy what are you doing?" In toddler speak he says "Papa funny!" I got a little nervous for some reason and went to pick him up and bring him to our room for the rest of the night. And as I'm hauling him away he says "Bye papa!" And blows a kiss at absolutely nothing I can see.

(h/t Occult Museum)

5. Last Visit

Our elderly neighbor fell sick and had to go to hospital. Her niece asked us to take care of her dog while she was away. So after school work and dinner and all, me and my brother were sent over to make sure he was doing ok.

So it was late at night, in this weird old lady's house, my brother was in the shed with the dog and I was in the living room looking at the creepy old photos on the mantelpiece. What follows is true: I heard the door creak and then a woman's voice called out the dog's name.

I freaked out, turned around, obviously there was nobody about. I thought maybe it was the neighbour's niece, but it had that weird "Did I hear that outside my head or inside it?" echo to it (you know what I mean?) so I also thought I was just letting the creepy house get to me.

But then I went out to my brother and Knocky and he was freaking out too because he thought he'd heard a woman's voice inside the shed with him saying "Oh there you are".

We both agreed the voice had that weird in-your-head sound to it and were convinced there were ghosts in the place. Left the dog in the shed, went home, and were greeted by Dad who told us the neighbour's niece had just called to say the neighbour'd passed away in the hospital a few hours ago.

(h/t Reddit)

6. Disappearing Runner

My son was 3 at the time and we were walking through the flower garden in my city's historical park. It has this sort of flower maze and throughout the walk I reminded him to stay on the path so the flowers wouldn't get trampled on. He stopped dead in his tracks and asked in a very confused voice: "Then why is that man running through them into the woods?" When I asked him where the "man" was, he became very uncomfortable and begged me to carry him to the car so we could leave and refused to talk any more about what he'd seen. He's 11 now and still gets uneasy when I bring it up or offer to go back to that particular part of the park.

(h/t Buzzfeed)

7. The Shadow

Years ago, I was sleeping with my fiancé at his mother's house. I woke up in the middle of the night with the weirdest feeling that someone was watching me. I scan the room and notice someone standing at the foot of the bed, on my fiancé's side. The figure was pitch black and featureless. I'm terrified & I think, "oh, I must be dreaming." Then I look over at my fiancé and he's staring at it too. It was the most horrifying moment ever. Suddenly, my fiancé sits up really quickly and aggressively. In that moment, the thing disappeared. Afterward, I wanted to dig a hole in the mattress and sleep under him.

I found out later that pretty much everyone in his family has seen this thing and they call it "the shadow." It still makes my skin crawl thinking about it. That night was the most frightened I have ever been in my life.

(h/t The Line Up)

8. Final Goodbye

My mom had three kids. There's me, the youngest, and my older brother "“ but before either of us were born, there was Jonathan. He was a sweet little blonde boy, big blue eyes, known for accidentally repeating Dad's swears in church. Wholesome kid, great in school, active outside.

When he was almost six, he was riding his bike and fell and hit his head on a rock. He got up and said he felt fine. My mom found him the next morning in his bed when she tried to wake him up to get to kindergarten, one pupil dilated and the other not. She got him air-lifted to the nearest hospital.

During this time, Jonathan's best friend Nick was sitting at the breakfast table eating cereal. Nick suddenly gets up from the table and goes to the door. When his mom asks him what's up, Nick says that Johnny was calling for him.

You see, Nick and Johnny lived on separate blocks, but they weren't allowed to cross the street without a parent yet because they were still fairly young. But they lived close enough to call to one another to come out to talk at their respective street corners.

So Nick goes out to the street corner while his mother receives a call from mine that Johnny was just declared dead in the hospital (idle brain aneurism that was triggered by the fall). Nick's mom can hardly handle this news and is now wondering where her son went.

But Nick comes back a few minutes later and says that he heard Johnny calling to him but he wasn't at the street corner when he looked, then sits down to continue eating his cereal. When his mom asks Nick what Johnny was saying, Nick says he had come to say, "Goodbye."

(h/t The Occult Museum)

So there you have it. If those eight inexplicable stories don't send chills down your spine I can't imagine anything will!

Do you have ghost story experiences like this? Share yours in the comments!