A Woman's Recurring Childhood Dream Predicted An Event 16 Years In The Future, And 22 Other Real-Life "Unsolved Mysteries" That Baffled My Brain This Month

Every month, I ask BuzzFeed readers just like you to share their spookiest real-life "unsolved mysteries." An "unsolved mystery" is basically any experience that cannot logically be explained, be it an encounter with a ghost, a glitch in the matrix, or anything of the like. I get hundreds of submissions every month, and I chose the best — and of course, creepiest — to share with you all for our collective enjoyment/horror. Without further ado, here are some of the most hair-raising submissions I received this month, as well as a few of the spookiest stories from previous editions:

1."When I was about 12 or 13, I had a very vivid dream about being at a large Thanksgiving dinner in a room full of strangers. Turning to the little boy next to me, I said, 'Adam, please pass the dressing.' I didn’t know anyone named Adam, I wasn’t sure where I was, and I didn’t recognize anyone at the table, but it seemed very friendly and very comfortable somehow. Over the next several years, I had the same dream many times. It was the same little boy next to me, same faces at the table, but I still didn’t know anyone."

"Fast forward to when I was 28 and had a son. We named him Adam because of my dream — it just felt like we were supposed to have a son named Adam. Life went on, and several years later, we were living overseas. For Thanksgiving one year, we were invited to a friend's house with several couples and maybe a half dozen kids. We were sitting at the table when someone next to me asked me to pass the dressing. As it was farther down the table, I turned to my son and said, 'Adam, please pass the dressing.' A chill went through me. The same phrase I’d used in the dream I’d had so many times…and when I looked around, I realized the friends around me were those faces I hadn’t recognized when I was a teenager."

—Anonymous

2."When I was seven months pregnant with my only child, my mom's cancer aggressively returned. She was admitted to the hospital, and I spent every day sitting with her, trying to keep her spirits lifted. She had several very near-death incidents during that month-long stay, but she repeatedly said she was going to live because she was determined to meet her grandchild. After a particularly horrific day where she ended up intubated in the ICU after a third surgery, I returned home absolutely exhausted and devastated, thinking it might be the last time I ever saw her. That night, I had a dream that we were in the hospital, but in a regular room, not the ICU. In the dream, I saw a small pair of black Nike toddler shoes on the countertop in her hospital room. That was all I remembered from the dream, but it gave me peace because somehow I knew she was going to pull through, at least until my child was old enough to wear those shoes."

"A couple of weeks later, she was home again. About a month after that, we brought home her grandson, and she got to snuggle and love on him just like she insisted she would.

When my child was 5 months old, a coworker brought me a pair of shoes that her child had outgrown: a pair of black Nike sandals. A sinking feeling washed over me because I had forgotten all about the dream. Two weeks later, my mom passed away. I miss her every day, but I feel so blessed that she was able to meet her grandson — something she fought very hard to do."

—Emily, Houston, TX

3."On March 2, 1974, I had a dream during the night that I was in France. It was a gray, overcast day and somewhat cold. I looked up and heard a large airplane as it was ascending out of Orly airport. I watched a piece of the airplane fall off. The next scene that I saw was one of utter devastation. The plane had crashed, and everyone aboard was dead. The dream stuck with me. The next evening, I was watching the news on TV when the exact same image that I had seen was shown on the TV."

"They said that a Turkish Airlines DC 10 had just taken off from Orly airport headed towards Heathrow airport in London, and that it had crashed and all 346 people aboard were killed. I was pretty much struck numb.

I wish I could say that this was the only time this ever happened, but it wasn’t. It was only the beginning. Over the course of the next 15 years, I had multiple dreams of plane crashes, and they all came true. I bent over backward, trying to figure out a way to warn people that they were coming, but I could never decipher the dreams enough to know what plane it was going to be, where it was going, or where it was coming from. Finally, about 15 years after that first incident, the dreams stopped, and I’ve not had a single one since."

—Darnell, Kennewick, WA

4."Two years ago, in the dead of winter, I was home alone with my infant daughter. It was midday, I think, and I was watching a movie while she slept in my lap. We lived in a rented home that was built in 1929, and most of the interior finish work was original, including the doors leading to the two bedrooms and bath in the hallway. These doors were very thick and very heavy, requiring some force to open and close them. This particular day, like most days, I left our master bedroom door slightly open. As I was sitting in our front room watching the movie, our bedroom door suddenly slammed shut with enough force to elicit a fear response from our dogs. Like, it closed with an ATTITUDE. If you’ve ever seen someone rage-slam a door closed, then that’s what it was like.

"I kind of just sat there in a stunned silence for a few moments before getting up to check it out. When I did, I noticed that the lock hinge was secured, which takes a lot of force to close. Like, a lot more than a light-gust-of-wind amount of force. None of it made any sense. There were no windows open since it was freezing outside, and general house settling didn't produce enough force to close one of these doors.

"In general, we had little spooky issues with this house, but this one genuinely disturbed me. I still can’t think of how this event happened, and it’s never happened since. So, it’s more than likely it was a fluke of physics beyond my comprehension, but I now leave the door open with a prop, so if it happens again, then I’ll know for certain there’s some ghostly fuckery about."

—Anonymous

5."I dated a woman who had a very close friend die in high school. His name was Kyle. He was cremated, and she wore some of his ashes in a heart-shaped necklace. One night, we were in my office listening to music and talking, which was right down the hall from my bedroom at the time. She brought up Kyle. She said he protected her and that she could prove it. I laughed and told her to show me. From where we sat in my office, we could see into the bedroom. On the side of my bed, there was a nightstand with a lamp on it that required you to pull a string to turn it off and on. She said, 'Kyle, show us that you’re here.' At that moment, the light in the bedroom turned off. I walked over and turned it back on, confused. There was no reason that light should have turned off — it was well-built, still plugged in, and had never done anything like that on its own. Unnerved, I asked her to leave and take 'Kyle' with her."

6."I was driving from Cincinnati, OH to Novi, Michigan for a monthly meeting with a company that manufactured new equipment for the company I worked for. It was a beautiful summer day; the sun was bright, and my companion and I were enjoying the drive. About midway in our journey, several state trooper cruisers sped by, blocking entrances to the highway but not stopping traffic already on the road. My companion and I traded guesses as to the reasons for their actions."

"It was around 1 p.m., and the troopers kept coming, so we decided to stop at the next truck stop for lunch and maybe let the mayhem, or whatever it was, pass us by. We found a small diner at the next exit, in a city neither of us had ever been to before. As we entered, there were several policemen having lunch, as well. My companion — let's call her 'E' — asked what all the commotion on the highway was about. They told us that Sarah Palin’s motorcade was headed north on I-75, and the patrol was just clearing the way for them.

Nodding, we took our table, and the waitress came over. She smiled at us and said, 'Hi guys. The usual?' My friend and I looked at each other, then at the waitress. 'The usual? We’ve never been here before.' I replied. She smiled, 'Yeah, right!' then recited exactly what we were going to order, right down to the drink choice. I asked her to humor me and tell me the last time we had eaten at her diner. She told me that we've come in at least once a week over the last several weeks.

I’m 5’ 6’’, Black, bald, and, 200 pounds. My companion is Indian, 5’ 2’’, very slim, and has a head of very curly black hair. I can't imagine there are many other duos traveling the highways out here that not only look exactly like us, but also eat the exact same food and drive the same car. To this day, we've never solved this mystery."

—Felix, Cincinnati, USA

7."My local church, which is now closed, was built in the mid-to-late 1800s. My mom used to help clean the church and was used to odd things happening while she was there. For instance, she'd be in the church office and would hear people in the main church room despite knowing it was empty. My sister and I went in to help clean once. We were dusting on separate sides of the room when I stood up to stretch. I saw a cloaked, hooded figure in the prayer corner, standing with her back to us. I say 'her' because I got a strong feeling she was female, even though all I saw was the cloak. It. Felt. NASTY."

"It felt like something I really shouldn’t be looking at. All I managed to say was, '[Sister’s name], did you see-' before she pointed into the corner. The figure had disappeared by then. We did the sensible thing and checked any likely hiding places, just in case it was an actual person. When we found no one, we got out as fast as we could.

It wasn’t the first or last paranormal thing I’ve seen, but it remains the only ‘shared’ ghost experience I've ever had, and also the only nasty one."

—Con, UK

8."When I was in my early 30s, something weird kept happening to me. Every time I stood after sitting, there would be a penny where I had been sitting. It didn't matter where I was sitting or what my body position was. I went to a friend's house and sat/stood just to make sure I wasn't imagining it. I wore a tight-fitting bathing suit (with no pockets) and sat down on the carpet, which had been inspected carefully by everyone before I sat. When I stood, there was a penny. Needless to say, no one had an explanation. This odd occurrence stopped after about six months and has never happened since."

—Anonymous

9."I grew up in a late-1700s farmhouse with its original outbuildings. When I was about 8, my dad redid the barn by hand. One day, I went up to visit him while he was working on the second story of the barn. My dad wasn’t there, but there were two children playing up there in weird clothes, and all the wood inside was bright and new instead of old and weathered like it usually was. I got really close to them, but they didn’t seem to see me or hear me. The girl was about my age and had long dark hair, and the boy was barely more than a toddler with a blonde bowl cut. I got really close to them, then the girl looked straight up at me and the next thing I knew I was outside on the swing set 50 feet away, listening to the sound of my father hammering inside the barn."

"Years later, when I was in high school, a friend was visiting and went to the bathroom on the second floor. When she came back, she asked, 'Have you seen a little boy in here before?' She had just seen a little boy who matched the exact description of the little boy I saw. She said he had a blonde bowl cut and 'looked Amish.'

That same year, my friends and I were making a video upstairs in the barn where I originally saw the children. When we watched it back, you could see the dark-haired girl clearly in a mirror leaning up against the wall. She was laughing at us. I’ve never seen them again, but I’m sure they’re still out there."

—Gillian, Massachusetts, USA

10."I was driving home from church one Sunday afternoon. It was a nice, sunny day. The church was only about two very long blocks from home. I approached my street, and there was a car in front of me sitting at the light. Across from us, there were two cars in the opposite direction, and we were all waiting for the light to change. You could hear birds chirping and the sounds of the city. I was resting my head on my hand, waiting for the light to change. All of a sudden, the city noise stopped. It just suddenly went completely quiet in my vehicle, as if time had stopped. The light turned green, but none of us moved."

"No one blew the horn at each other, either. Then, out of the peripheral vision on my right, I saw movement. It was a car doing about 50 in a 30. It blew through the red light and never even put on its brakes. Right after we each in our respective cars watched it fly by, the sounds of the city returned. It was as if we were placed in a protective bubble to keep us from moving. If we had moved when we were supposed to, I would have been the one hit broadside on the right side of my vehicle. Whatever happened that day saved me."

—LC Briggs

11."A littler over ten years ago, I rented a house in Maricopa, Arizona. Maricopa is a small town in the middle of the desert. At one point, it had been a popular railroad stop. The town had a rich history, but around the time I lived there, it was just a small town with mostly new housing developments. The house I rented was lovely and cheap, but we only stayed there until our lease ended. Lots of strange things happened to me and my now husband while we lived there, but this experience stands out the most, as it was the most concrete, strange encounter we had."

"On this particular Saturday, I had gotten home around noon after working a half-day. My then-fiancé had cleaned the house while I was gone, most notably clearing off the giant island in the kitchen. I got home and noted he had cleaned, so I thanked him for completely clearing off the island because it had been pretty cluttered prior. We both talked about how much nicer the kitchen looked when the island was cleared off.

I went to the bedroom to change, and he came with me. When we came back out to the kitchen, there was a pink lighter sitting in the middle of the island. It was mine, and it'd been missing for about two weeks. We were both positive there was not a single item on the island when we went into the bedroom and if my fiancé had found my pink lighter while he cleaned, he would’ve told me, as I had looked all over for it and missed it. We still, to this day, cannot explain how that happened. By the time our lease ended, I waited out in the car for the landlord to hand over the keys because I was too scared to even be in the house alone."

—Katie, Beaverton, OR

12."It was summer, and I was staying in a dorm at my college. I left for the student union around 10 a.m. on a bright, sunny day. When I got back to the dorm an hour later, the usually bustling building was empty, and all the doors to other students' rooms were wide open. Each time I passed a room, the door slammed closed behind me. I heard howling wind outside, so I tried to write it all off as that. After a while, I started getting scared, so I quickly shuffled out of the building and scurried back to the student union to look for my dormmates. I saw none of them there. I went back to the dorm like 30 minutes later after I calmed down, and it was fully bustling as usual."

"I asked a few people where they and others had gone, assuming there was a field trip maybe. They said they’d been there all day. I thought the first couple of people were pranking me, but after asking several more, I realized it wasn’t a joke. I’m still so shaken up; my hair is standing up just retelling it. I still have no explanation to this day."

—Deanna G

13."I grew up in a house in a small town in New Hampshire. The house always felt 'odd,' and unexplained things happened while we lived there. I'd hear footsteps walking around when no one was there, items would be moved around, and there was a creepy upstairs closet that we never went into. I asked my mother years later why she had never stored anything inside it since it was a walk-in and quite big. Her answer was simply, 'I don't know.'"

"My room was upstairs, and my walls abutted that closet. When I was about 12, my aunt and uncle gave me a pair of earrings. The earrings were white with a purple flower on them. They were my favorite pair, and I wore them all the time. When I took them off, I always put them in the same spot on my vanity with the backings next to them.

One day, as I was moving about in my room, I bumped into the vanity and sent the earrings and backings flying. My room had wide floorboards with gaps in between them. I watched in horror as my earrings and the backings disappeared between the floorboards. I was very upset and went downstairs for the rest of the day. I did not go back upstairs to my room until it was time for bed.

My room was the only one up there (the other room with the huge closet was unfinished), so no one else had been up there either. When I entered my room, I discovered both of my earrings lying neatly side by side on my vanity with their backings behind them. I have never been able to come up with a logical explanation for this."

—Melanie Hodge, Sandwich, NH

14."One time, I had a friend over at my house, and we were in my room upstairs. He was sitting at the foot of my bed when I went downstairs to get something. I called his name from the bottom of the stairs, but there was no answer. I went back upstairs to my room, and my bed was completely empty. I thought he was pulling a prank on me or was going to pop out and try to scare me, so I checked everywhere I thought he could be (in my closet, underneath my bed, I even checked the other rooms and bathrooms upstairs). There was no sign of him anywhere. Confused, I went downstairs to see if my mom had seen him. And as soon as I got to the bottom of the steps, I heard him calling my name and watched him exit my room.

"He said he heard my footsteps coming up the stairs, but they suddenly stopped, and he didn't see me. To this day, we have no explanation for what actually happened."

—c4bed291d5

15."I was sitting on my bed with my daughter, and she dropped her pacifier under it. I was a teen, so I still had my trundle bed. I didn’t feel like pulling the trundle out to retrieve it, so I decided I’d just get it the next time the bed was pulled out, and I gave her a different pacifier instead. When that time came...there was no pacifier. I figured maybe it somehow bounced and got caught up in the bed frame. That was definitely something I wasn’t trying to deal with at that moment, so I let it go. A few years later, I finally got a new bed and remembered the lost pacifier I thought was caught in the trundle. I pulled the mattress off and lifted the trundle frame, but there was no pacifier anywhere. The room was cleaned many, many times over the years and eventually was completely emptied out when I painted it. I have absolutely no idea where the pacifier went — I've never found it. It’s been almost 30 years, and I’m still baffled by it."

16."When my sister and I were in primary school, my mum worked late on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. I very vividly remember on Wednesdays we would go to my cousin's house until she was able to pick us up, which my mother confirmed as being true. However, I ALSO remember being picked up by this younger mum who had a child my sister's age whose house we would stay at on Thursdays until mum could pick us up. Me and my sister both vividly remember this, but mum said it never happened. This girl's mum was SO nice, and she also had an older sister who was about 16 at the time, and I remember her being moody. I remember their steep driveway, and how we used to go ride down it with our bums on a skateboard. I told my mom about this, hoping to jolt a memory, but I got nothing. There’s no connection to it being anyone else we could’ve hung out with, either."

—Anonymous

17."I’ve always read other people's stories about how they see their family or friends in one place, only to have them appear elsewhere. I’ve always shrugged it off as their minds playing tricks...until it happened to me. The other day, I was downstairs making dinner. I went upstairs to get something and passed by my daughter's room. I saw her laying down in bed, watching something on her phone. I told her dinner was almost ready, but she just glanced at me and went back to her phone. When I made my way back downstairs, I saw her laying on the living room couch. I asked her how she managed to get by me on the stairs without me noticing, and she said she’d been on the couch the whole time.

"She said she even saw me walk up the stairs. I’ve convinced myself that my mind just manifested her in her bedroom because I see her there so often, but I distinctly remember rolling my eyes and thinking how she never responds when I passed by her. 🤷‍♀️"

—lunallee212

18."For our first Christmas together, my husband gifted me a necklace that I wore every day from then on. It had a ton of sentimental value to me, so I constantly checked to see that it was still on me. I only ever took it off for a shower, but otherwise, I slept in it and wore it every day. It’s a very thin chained necklace with a few pearls on it, and not very long, either. One night, after a shower, I put it back on, but later, while lying in bed, I realized it was no longer around my neck. I remembered going downstairs to get something and coming back up, so I retraced my steps to see if I'd lost it down there. I could not find it anywhere. I was starting to panic because I was afraid one of the cats had gotten ahold of it, and if so, it was doomed. But, no. I looked for a good hour with my husband as well as my mom, but we couldn't find it anywhere."

"It was late, so I decided we’d just look again in the morning and went to bed, still super worried. My mom is an early bird, so the next morning, she left through the garage before we were up, and — lo and behold — there it was, neatly placed by the doorway in a perfect circle. I didn’t even have a reason to go in the garage for anything the night before, but we still definitely checked in case something weird happened, and I know for a fact it was absolutely not there. We combed through every room, so how it got through a closed door, untangled and so delicately placed in view, is still a mystery. We were all a little freaked out, to say the least, but I’ve never misplaced it since!"

—Anonymous

19."One night, I was fishing off the bulkhead of the local town marina. There are three docks in this marina: the A, B, and C docks. You could leave boats overnight on the B and C docks, but A had to be vacated at nightfall, so there weren't any boats or people on the dock. I was fishing on A when I caught a fish that was too small to keep but had swallowed the lure deep in its throat. I didn’t have anything to remove the lure, when all of a sudden, there was a man standing next to me, asking what I was doing."

"I explained that I couldn’t see how badly the fish was hooked, and he offered me a flashlight to help. I then said I needed a long-nose plier to remove the hook, and he handed one to me. I released the fish, and he started walking down the dock towards the water. It's important to note that there's no way off the dock but back, which means he'd have to walk right past me. After I picked up my fishing pole, I looked down the dock to thank him for his help...but he was nowhere to be seen. He had just vanished into thin air, just as he'd appeared."

—Anonymous

20."When I was about 7 years old, my grandmother sent me a box of embroidery thread. It was in a beautiful gift box covered in cherubs and the thread was all different colors. It became a kind of bedtime ritual for me to count every thread in the box before I went to sleep. I would lay the box carefully beside my bed when I finished. One morning, I woke up, and the box was gone. I searched everywhere, in every room. I asked my parents and siblings, and everyone denied seeing it. I cried myself to sleep for a week, and every day, I and my family would look. One morning, I woke up, and the box was sitting in the same spot I would always put it, like it'd never even been missing in the first place. Inexplicably, two purple embroidery threads were placed on the lid. Even to this day — 20 years later — it still bothers me."

—Makayla, Kentucky, USA

21."Growing up in the late '80s, I was a latch key kid and kept losing my house key. My parents had to change the locks at least five times that I can remember. The last time they changed the locks I was around 11, and they told me I’d be grounded if I lost the next house key. My mom put the house key on a long piece of nylon rope necklace that I’d worn every day for months. One day while I was riding the bus home from school it just disappeared in thin air from my neck. I was always fiddling with it, but never took it off. I had my back against the seat, so no one could've taken it off of me. I remember looking around everywhere on the bus for it, and no one had admitted to seeing it."

"When I got home, I asked my next-door neighbor that was around my age to help me break in my house. Apparently a second story window was unlocked, so he used his dad’s ladder to get up to that window and let me in. I left a window unlocked and would crawl through it every school day for the next three or four months, instead of telling my parents I lost another house key and getting in trouble. One Saturday, I woke up to my ceiling fan spinning. This was weird, because it was autumn and no longer hot, so I hadn't turned it on. Then, I noticed something hanging on the ceiling fan knob on my wall. It was my house key, still on the rope, dangling like someone had just put it there.

I confronted my parents about it, and they had no knowledge of how it got there. They had no idea it had even been lost. The whole situation was very weird. I have no idea how my key just vanished to reappear months later. It apparently had a profound effect on me, because in 35 years I have never lost another set of keys."

—Anonymous

22."I was at a camp one summer in the mountains, and we went to visit a nearby ghost town. It was a beautiful place — a tiny mining outpost right at the base of the mountains, out in a big open meadow. It had been abandoned for a very long time, and the Forest Service was just letting everything fall down naturally, so we couldn't go in any of the buildings. While I was looking at the old inn with one of my friends, we spotted a woman in a floral skirt and shirt walking past the back of the building. You could see right through it — there were no doors, and the hallway from the front to the back was unobstructed. She looked like she was just out doing some chores."

"We figured she was someone from one of the nearby cabins who was doing the same thing we were, but when we walked to the other side of the building, no one was there. We had a clear view of anyone in the meadow, too, as it didn't have anything growing higher than our shins. No one with us was wearing a skirt, either."

—Anonymous

23.And finally, "The summer I turned 17, I was lying on my bed getting ready to go to sleep at about 10 p.m. when I heard a scraping sound on the outside wall under my window. We had a big rabbit cage wrapped in chicken wire there. The entire outside of our home was coated with a mixture of paint and sand that produced a very rough texture, which made a distinct sound. This scraping business went on for several minutes, and I was thinking that the rabbits were being spooked by some sort of carnivore. Finally, I got up and pulled the curtain open to see what all the commotion was about."

"Now, our backyard dumped into dozens of undeveloped acres. The nearest neighbor’s lights had to have been one or two miles away. Other than that, it was like standing in a dark closet when looking back there at night.

Immediately after I pulled the curtain open, I was face-to-face with a hooded figure. The hood was pointed — it looked like something a monk or wizard would wear. This entity had no face, but I knew this thing was looking at me. It was darker than my pitch-black backyard. We starred at each other for about 30 seconds, then this thing slid very slowly to the right and disappeared.

I smashed my face against the glass to try to see where it went. When I couldn’t, I jerked my pants on and ran out of the house and into to the backyard. The boogeyman was gone. I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid, but I do believe this entity was demonic. It tried to shake me…but it didn’t work."

—Anonymous

If you enjoyed these stories, you can read a bunch more of them here.

Have you ever experienced an "unsolved mystery" like these that you just can't explain? A glitch in the matrix, run-in with a doppelgänger, paranormal experience...anything! If so, tell us about it in the comments below or via this completely anonymous form.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.