Haunted Refrigerator?

Informant: Female/25/Korean ancestry

Location: Kaimuki, Oahu

This may not be scary, but it baffled me beyond belief.

My roommate and I had purchased a rather large pitcher to store our juice in. This pitcher was about as tall as the bottom level of our fridge, and very large. It was impossible not to see it when you opened the fridge. You'd have to be blind.

One day my roommate came to me asking where the pitcher was. I told him it has to be in the fridge, where it always is. It wasn't on the usual bottom shelf. It wasn't on the top, or on the door (not like it could have fit there anyway). So we decide to check likely places like the sink and the dishwasher, and even unlikely ones like the cabinets and even our bathrooms. We couldn't find it. The pitcher simply disappeared.

He asked me if I took it anywhere, to which I said no. I asked if he did, and he said no too. There had been no visitors since the last time we saw the pitcher, so nobody could have taken it. Where could it have gone?

Then a couple days later, my roommate walks into my room holding the pitcher. I asked where it was, and he said "On the bottom shelf of the fridge." He could have been messing with me and hid the pitcher that whole time, but he was sort of a scardy cat and he looked a bit pale and perplexed.

Not too long after that episode, I was in the kitchen cooking myself some breakfast. I usually take out what I need, like the eggs, butter, etc. The last thing I always do after making breakfast is to put the ingredients away, and take out the Tabasco sauce. I opened the fridge and my hand automatically went to where the Tabasco always is, except it wasn't there. I looked all over the fridge and even in the cabinets, but it simply vanished.

Finally I gave up and turned back to my plate, and lo and behold...there was the Tabasco, sitting on the counter next to the stove. I know I didn't take it out. If I had taken it out with my ingredients, there would have been condensation on the bottle since it was sitting next to the hot stove. But this bottle was ice cold like it just came out of the fridge.

I muttered an awkward "Thank you," just in case I had some sort of helpful kitchen spirit.

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The Hole in the bedroom

Informant: Female/23/Korean ancestry

Location: Kaimuki, Oahu

I have a friend that can see spirits. I know what you’re thinking, but just go with it. Since the strange goings-ons in my apartment had graduated to actual physical displeasure, I decided to enlist his help in figuring out what the hell was going on.

First let me give you a little more background. Ever since the shadow man, my spare bedroom had turned into this creepy room that nobody wanted to go into. Every time my friends came over, they always steered clear from that room. It’s nothing we really talked about, just something we all mutually concurred on. That room was creepy.

Case in point: a friend of mine came over. He had only been in my apartment living room before briefly, for about 5 minutes. He never saw the rest of my apartment. But he walked into my apartment and immediately turned the corner into the hallway. I thought he had to use the bathroom, but I didn’t hear the door close so I followed him. I found him standing in the middle of that spare bedroom. He turned around, rubbing his arms, and said “This is a creepy room,” to which I said “Funny you should mention that…”

Back to the psychic friend. He asked me to draw him a map of my apartment labeling just the windows and the doors. So the crude picture I drew him (that didn’t showcase my spectacular artistic ability at all, I might add) looked something along the lines of this:

He looked at the picture for a little while, and started pointing out where my furniture and everything was (keep in mind he's never seen my apartment in his life, not even in pictures). He located my couch, and he also located my computer desk (“I feel a strong electrical disturbance here. Is this where you have a computer or something?”). Then he looked at the spare bedroom and said “There’s a hole here.” A hole? What did he mean?

“There’s a hole here where spirits can come in and out of. There is a man in your apartment who walks the line between malicious and harmless. He walks a path from your spare bedroom, into your bedroom, and into your bathroom.” This would explain why I felt like someone was looking over my shoulder sometimes. And it definitely explains why nobody liked going in that room.

My friend suggested moving my bed further away from the door to stop him from pressing me (it had happened about 3 times). I seemed to be in his way or something. But luckily not too long after that I moved out of that apartment. Not because it was haunted or anything, but because someone purchased it. I often wonder if the new tenants ever experience anything out of the ordinary.

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From the Doorway

Informant: Female/23/Korean ancestry

Location: Kaimuki, Oahu

My apartment was never the same after the shadow man experience. Every now and then, it would feel like someone was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. Or I would hear a knock at the door, but nobody would be there when I looked out of the peephole. I could deal with those things, but there were some things that I couldn’t deal with in a logical way.

One day my boyfriend (at the time) sister came for the day. She had the key to get into the apartment for that day and was coming back in the afternoon. I decided to take a nap. I fell asleep on my bed in the middle of the afternoon, probably around 2pm. I woke up because I thought I heard the sound of the door open, and keys jingling. I thought, “She’s back, I better get up!” But for some reason, I couldn’t move. But I was able to see the doorway, and it looked like she was peeking through the doorway at me. I could just see a head.

I thought, “Oh my goodness, how embarrassing! I have to get up!” But I couldn’t move. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move. It felt like all my muscles were dead; like they were suffocating, if that makes any sense. The whole time I struggled to move, someone was looking at me from the doorway.

Finally I decided that I should just stop trying to fight it. The moment I did, I was able to move. I got up, went into the living room expecting her to be there, but she wasn’t. Nobody was there.

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The Shadow Man

Informant: Female/23/Korean ancestry

Location: Kaimuki, Oahu

Nothing strange ever happened to me. I had always secretly wished that I could experience something paranormal, but you know what they say. It won’t happen if you expect it. My second year of college was a blur of parties and gatherings in my apartment. But one night sticks out in my mind as clear as day.

My experience actually started a few parties before this particular one. It started with my inviting an acquaintance and his cousin to a party. He accepted, and asked “Can I bring one more person?” I said sure, you know. The more the merrier. He said “Okay. But you can’t see him.” I was like, excuse me? This particular friend was able to see spirits. I must admit I didn’t entirely believe him at all, so I said “Sure, just make sure you take him with you before you leave.”

He didn’t take him with him.

The night in question was (appropriately) a Halloween party. A bunch of my friends and I were dressed in costume, drinking beers and having a good time. About five people were sitting at my dining table, so I was standing nearby talking to them. From the dining table there was a clear view of my bedroom at the end of the hallway. There was a light on, so it was dimly lit. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man standing in the middle of the doorway. He was solid black, standing there ominously. The second I turned to get a better look, he was gone.

Slightly spooked, I turned to my friends and said “Okay. I’ve had a few beers, but did anyone else see the man in my doorway just now?” Everyone was silent. Some scoffed a bit, probably thinking I was just trying to scare them. Then my friend, who was dead sober, quietly said, “I saw him.”

Everyone went silent. We decided that it was probably someone from the party who was in my room. My friend and I got up and went into my room expecting to find someone there, but everyone who was at my party was in the living room. Nobody was in my room.

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Skateboarder Spirit on Campus

Informant: Male/20/Mexican-European ancestry

Location: Chaminade University, Oahu

There is a legend at my school about a student who was killed and now haunts the campus. He was a skater who was hit by a car and killed.

One night around 2:00 a.m. my friend was walking back to her dorm from mine when she noticed a guy with longish hair holding a skateboard was staring at her. She started to walk a little faster and turned around to look at him, and he was still staring at her intently. So she started to walk really fast, and she turned around one more time...but he was gone. Nowhere to be seen.

She looked up some old newspaper articles and discovered who he was and the day he died. The day she saw him was the anniversary of his death.

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Computer Savvy Spirit

Informant: Male/20/Mexican-European ancestry

Location: Chaminade University, Oahu

My campus is full of creepy stories, as is every campus across the nation. In my dorm, I would hear strange things every now and then. I would usually turn off my laptop before I went to bed, but I would leave it open. I'd lay down to sleep, and then I would hear a clack-clack-clack noise. I'd sit up, look around, the sound would stop. I'd lay back down to sleep again, and the clack-clack-clack noise would start again. I knew that noise. I knew it was the sound of my laptop keyboard.

There was nobody else in my room besides me. Whenever I'd close the laptop, the noise would stop.

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Bloody Mary

Informant: Female/23/Korean-Portuguese ancestry

Location: Kaimuki, Oahu

It was a children’s game; something that you played at slumber parties, or birthday parties. In fact, that’s exactly where I read it. In the “games to play at a slumber party” section of The Daring Book for Girls that I got for Christmas. My friends were recalling things we enjoyed doing as kids, and I suddenly remembered. 

“Did you guys ever play Bloody Mary?” Everyone was silent in thought for a second, but the general consensus was, yes, but nothing ever happened. 

There were different variations of the game, depending on who you played with or where you were from, I guess. Some people said to say her name three times, some said 10. The book that I had said 13 times. The instructions said to go into a dark room with a mirror, like a bathroom, and hold a flashlight up to your face and say “Bloody Mary” into the mirror 13 times, and she would appear. 

We were a bunch of 20 somethings who no longer believed in these silly children’s tales, but we were feeling nostalgic for our childhoods, and were excited to try this game. Maybe this time it would work, who knows? 

Me, my friend, my roommate, and my boyfriend shuffled into the bathroom. We elected my boyfriend as the one to stand in the mirror and summon Bloody Mary, mostly because we know that weird shit has happened to him in the past, and he would be most likely to illicit a response from the dead. He stood in front of the mirror with the flashlight, while the three of us sat at the edge of the bathtub, facing the door, and facing him. 

The light from the hallway outside glowed under the bathroom door. I focused on it while my boyfriend chanted “Bloody Mary” into the mirror as my roommate counted them off dramatically. When he got to 13, he put the flashlight under his chin and yelled to scare us, and of course nothing happened. But then my roommate said, “Wait. just wait. Shhh…”

We all fell silent. And then, as I looked at the light under the bathroom door, it went black. 

BOOM

I’d never seen my boyfriend move so fast. In the blink of an eye he was in the corner of the bathtub behind me, clutching the flashlight like he just won his first Oscar. 

We all heard it. We all heard the banging on the door. I clutched my friend's arm so hard I was certain I drew blood with my fingernails. The light under the door went black, but not like a black out. It went black as if someone was walking in front of it, but someone wearing a long dress, because there was one long stretch of black that passed across the door. In my mind, it was someone in a gown. Queen’s wear gowns. 

My roommate locked the bathroom door and turned on the light. We sat there in utter shock, trying to digest what had just happened. Naturally, our first reaction was to hiss accusations at my boyfriend, screaming that he hit the door on purpose to scare us. He sat in the tub, barely able to get a word out, still clutching the flashlight, shaking his head vigorously denying it. But then we realized, even if he had banged on the door, that doesn’t explain how the light outside went out. 

Finally we realized that we couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, and we opted to leave. I unlocked the door, and my roommate held the flashlight behind me like a bat. 

We checked the entire apartment, but nothing was there. We checked closets, under the beds, cabinets, even the fridge. But there was nothing there. Nobody else was in the apartment at the time. We just could not explain what happened. 

After a while my boyfriend decided to walk back to the dorms. He was fine before he left, and it was only about a five minute walk from my apartment. He called me after he got there and said, “Hey, so, I don’t want to freak you out but...there’s a mark on my arm that wasn’t there when I left your apartment.” He snapped me a blurry picture, and I saw shallow red scratches. He said, “I don’t know, it kind of looks like a W.” 

But I knew that it was really an M.

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Don't Go In the Bathroom Alone!

Informant: Female/19/mixed
Location: Chaminade University, Oahu

Rumor has it that the dorms on the campus I attend are haunted. I didn't believe in that at first, but the thing about rumors is that they are often true.

There was something odd about the community bathrooms on my side of the dorms. No idea why, but you always got the creeps while in there. One afternoon I went in for a routine pee when I heard a sniffling noise coming from the stall next to me. Without shame I leaned over and stuck my head under the division to see no one was there. I let out a small cough to get anyone's attention, see if there was someone else in the bathroom with me. No reply, no shuffle, nothing. No one was there with me. After a few more moments the sniffling continued but shifted from a crying sniffle to a full on sniff, like trying to smell me out. So, I bolted. Don't worry I washed my hands at the bathroom down the hall. Later that evening I told my roommate about the incident and she said she had had a similar experience where it feels like there is someone in the stall next to you, but when you look no one is there. We shrugged it off only to be shocked the next week.

I was finished taking a shower. I opened the partition curtain for my shower stall to go brush my teeth at the sink 5 feet away. When I turned around, the shower curtain was closed. I was a bit puzzled because I was SURE I had opened the thing. I shrugged went back and opened the curtain again to remove my belongings and go fiddle with my hair for a bit in front of the mirror. When I turned around again, the shower curtain was closed. There was no one else in the bathroom but me, so I was a bit freaked out by this. I again told my roommate who told me that some of her shower supplies had been moved around or were missing. I joked saying that maybe the ghost wanted to take a shower too.

Minor stuff like that continued through out the year. My hairbrush would be moved out of my shower kit, slippers and clothes rearranged, and every now and then my entire shower kit would be moved over to the other side of the shower stall. I just chucked it up to a helpful ghost until the last night I showered in that bathroom. I was washing my hair and went to rinse the foam off my hands when all of a sudden I felt something gently pull my hair. I thought, "wtf?" And when I reached my hand up there was a spike of hair on top of my head as if someone had pulled my hair up. Yeah, that was the fastest shower I have ever taken and I have never been back to that bathroom again.

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