10 True Paranormal Stories to Read This Halloween
Halloween is the perfect time for ghost stories, horror movies and tales of things that go bump in the night.
But sometimes the most unsettling stories aren’t found in fiction.
All across the world there have been cases involving ordinary families being terrorised inside their own homes, mysterious footprints appearing overnight, lighthouse keepers vanishing without a trace and frightened witnesses claiming to have encountered something they just couldn’t explain.
Some have been investigated for decades, while others have inspired books, TV programmes and even films. Many have perfectly reasonable theories attached to them, while a few continue to divide paranormal investigators and sceptics to this day.
So, turn down the lights, make yourself comfortable and prepare to be scared.
Here are 10 true reported paranormal and unexplained stories to read about this Halloween.
*This article contains affiliate links. Paranormal Globe may earn a small commission from purchases made via the links at no additional cost to you.
1. The Enfield Poltergeist
The home of the Enfield Poltergeist.
On the evening of 31 August 1977, strange knocking sounds began echoing through a council house in Enfield, North London.
Peggy Hodgson lived at the property with her four children. That night, her children Janet and John complained that their beds were moving and that something was shuffling around their bedroom. Then Peggy heard it herself.
Knocks seemed to come from inside the walls, while a chest of drawers reportedly moved across the bedroom floor.
The neighbours were called, then the police.
One attending police officer later reported witnessing a chair move across the living-room floor without anyone touching it, and that was only the beginning.
Over the following months, witnesses reported objects flying around rooms, furniture moving, doors apparently opening by themselves and unexplained knocking sounds throughout the house. Janet Hodgson, then aged twelve, became the focus of much of the activity.
Perhaps the most famous incident was the deep, rasping male voice that began apparently speaking through Janet. The voice claimed to belong to a man called Bill who had previously lived in the house.
Paranormal investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair spent long periods of time inside the house documenting events, while journalists, neighbours, police officers and other visitors also witnessed unusual incidents. But Enfield remains controversial.
Janet and her sister admitted that they occasionally played tricks on investigators, and sceptics have argued that much, and perhaps all of the activity could have been created by the children.
Those who investigated the case though disagreed. They maintained that although some incidents were clearly faked, others occurred under circumstances they could not explain.
Almost fifty years later, that argument continues. And perhaps that is why the Enfield Poltergeist remains one of Britain’s most famous hauntings.
Halloween reading: Guy Lyon Playfair’s This House Is Haunted remains one of the best-known accounts of the Enfield case.
2. The South Shields Poltergeist
South Shields seafront. The town that is home to the South Shields Poltergeist.
Not every supposedly haunted house is an ancient mansion or crumbling Victorian rectory, sometimes it is an entirely ordinary modern family home. That was certainly the case in South Shields.
During 2005 and 2006, a young couple, referred to publicly by the pseudonyms Marc and Marianne to protect their privacy, reported increasingly disturbing activity inside their home.
It apparently began relatively quietly. Objects went missing before turning up somewhere unexpected. Doors seemed to open and close on their own. Taps would reportedly turn on by themselves without any explanation, but then things became much more frightening.
Objects were allegedly thrown around rooms. Children’s toys appeared to move or activate by themselves. Threatening messages reportedly appeared on a child’s drawing board, and the family claimed they received strange and threatening telephone calls and text messages.
At its most disturbing point, knives were said to have been thrown around the house and Marc reportedly suffered unexplained scratches to his body.
Paranormal investigators Darren W. Ritson and Michael J. Hallowell became involved and they spent several months documenting the case. They both claimed to have personally witnessed incidents they could not explain.
The story eventually became the subject of the book *The South Shields Poltergeist: One Family’s Fight Against an Invisible Intruder*.
This particular case has always fascinated me because South Shields is my home town. When rumours of the haunting began circulating around the town, very few people knew exactly where the house was or who lived there.
When I eventually discovered its location many years later, I didn’t expect it to be an ordinary modern terraced house. I was always expecting it to be a big old house like an old vicarage type home, but it wasn’t. It was just an ordinary home on an ordinary fairly modern housing estate. But sometimes those are the stories that feel the creepiest.
Read more on Paranormal Globe: The South Shields Poltergeist: A Terrifying Haunting
Halloween reading: The South Shields Poltergeist by Darren W. Ritson and Michael J. Hallowell.
3. The Black Monk of Pontefract
30 East Drive. The home to the Black Monk of Pontefract
Another perfectly ordinary British house developed an extraordinary reputation during the 1960s.
The Pritchard family lived at 30 East Drive in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. Soon after moving into the property, the family began reporting strange activity.
Pools of water mysteriously appeared on the floor. Objects seemed to move without any explanation. Lights would switch themselves on and off. Doors slammed and strange noises echoed through the house.
The family initially nicknamed whatever was responsible “Fred.” But Fred apparently wasn’t particularly friendly.
The activity reportedly became increasingly aggressive, with objects flying across rooms and furniture moving on its own. In one of the most disturbing claims associated with the case, the family’s daughter Diane was said to have been dragged upstairs by an unseen force.
Then came the sightings of something more sinister.
Members of the family reported seeing a tall, dark, hooded figure resembling a monk. It became known as the Black Monk of Pontefract.
Various stories attempted to explain the apparition, including tales involving the execution of a monk nearby, although establishing the historical truth behind those stories is difficult.
The house itself still exists and has become something of a pilgrimage site for paranormal investigators.
The case also provided inspiration for the 2012 British horror film When the Lights Went Out.
Whether “Fred” was a ghost, a poltergeist, something darker or simply part of a story that grew bigger with every retelling remains open to debate.
But the idea of something dark and violent lurking inside such an unremarkable suburban home is difficult to shake.
3. Borley Rectory – The Most Haunted House in England?
Borley Rectory. Known as being the Most Haunted House in England.
Few haunted buildings have generated as much debate as Borley Rectory.
Built in Essex in 1863, the large Victorian rectory eventually developed a reputation for its strange happenings.
Residents and visitors reported hearing unexplained footsteps, bells ringing without any explanation, objects moving on their own and mysterious unexplained sounds.
The most famous of all was the supposed apparition of a nun who was repeatedly said to walk through the grounds.
The story attracted the attention of celebrated psychical researcher Harry Price, who first investigated Borley in 1929.
Price later rented the property himself and recruited observers to stay inside and record anything unusual.
The stories became increasingly dramatic.
Messages supposedly appeared on walls. Objects were thrown. Strange communications appeared to suggest that the spirit of a murdered nun was haunting the site.
Price eventually described Borley as “the most haunted house in England”, a title that has followed it ever since. But there is another side to the story.
Later researchers questioned many of the claims associated with Borley, and even Price himself became the subject of accusations that his evidence had been exaggerated or manipulated.
The Society for Psychical Research conducted extensive examinations of the case, and the debate over what genuinely happened at Borley has continued for decades.
The rectory was severely damaged by fire in 1939 and later demolished, yet despite the building disappearing, the legend didn’t.
Borley remains one of Britain’s most defining ghost stories, not only because of what was supposedly witnessed there, but because it demonstrates just how difficult separating paranormal evidence, folklore, publicity and human behaviour can sometimes be.
Halloween reading: Harry Price’s original The Most Haunted House in England is still widely available, alongside numerous later investigations into the Borley mystery.
4. The Bell Witch
How the Bell Witch house originally looked. A replica now stands on its grounds.
More than two centuries ago, farmer John Bell and his family began experiencing something strange at their home in rural Tennessee.
According to accounts passed down through generations, it all started with unusual sightings around the Bell property.
Then came the noises. the scratching, the knocking, and the sounds from inside the walls.
Bed sheets were reportedly pulled off from sleeping children and family members complained of being pinched, slapped and scratched by something they couldn’t see.
Eventually, the entity apparently found its voice.
The unseen presence supposedly spoke openly with members of the family and visitors, sang hymns and recited passages from the Bible.
It became known locally as the Bell Witch.
The entity reportedly developed a particular hatred for John Bell and his daughter Betsy.
According to the story, it repeatedly tormented John while also attempting to prevent Betsy from marrying a young man named Joshua Gardner.
John Bell died in December 1820 after suffering from a mysterious illness. The family’s tormentor supposedly claimed responsibility.
One of the most famous additions to the story involves future US president Andrew Jackson, who is said to have visited the Bell farm after hearing about the disturbances.
Whether every detail of the story occurred exactly as later writers described is impossible to establish.
The earliest detailed published accounts appeared many years after the alleged events, leaving historians and paranormal researchers with an uncomfortable mixture of family history and folklore, but the Bell Witch has become one of America’s most lasting paranormal legends.
More than 200 years later, people still travel to Adams, Tennessee in search of the story, and perhaps the witch herself.
5. The Amityville Horror
A recent photo of the Amityville Horror House. It has changed very little from the murder days.
There is one important distinction to make before telling the story of Amityville.
The horrifying event that started the story was very real.
On 13 November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered six members of his family inside their home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York.
Just over a year later, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house with their children, but they only remained there for 28 days.
According to the Lutz family, their brief stay became a nightmare.
They described strange smells and unexplained cold spots. Doors and windows apparently opened and closed by themselves. George reportedly began waking repeatedly around 3:15am, approximately the same time that the DeFeo murders were believed to have taken place.
Other claims became considerably more dramatic.
Kathy was supposedly levitated from her bed. A mysterious creature with glowing red eyes was reportedly seen outside the house. George claimed his personality began to change, and finally the family fled the house.
Their account became Jay Anson’s bestselling 1977 book The Amityville Horror, followed by the enormously successful 1979 movie and a seemingly endless series of sequels and documentaries.
However, there are substantial reasons to question the supernatural story.
Critics and people connected with the case have disputed or contradicted parts of the Lutz family’s account, while allegations that elements of the haunting were deliberately created or embellished have followed the story for decades.
The debate has never completely disappeared.
Was the house genuinely haunted?
Was the family terrified by something they couldn’t explain?
Or did an already horrific real-life tragedy become the foundation for one of the most successful supernatural stories ever told?
Whatever you believe, Amityville demonstrates something that can occasionally be more disturbing than any ghost story. Sometimes the horror that definitely happened is frightening enough.
Halloween reading: Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror is the book that turned the story into an international phenomenon, although it should be read with the controversy surrounding its claims firmly in mind.
6. The Flannan Isles Lighthouse Mystery
The Flannan Isles Lighthouse. The missing lighthouse keepers still remain a mystery today.
There doesn’t need to be a ghost for a story to be haunting.
On a remote island off Scotland stands the Flannan Isles Lighthouse.
In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers were stationed there, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald McArthur. Then the lighthouse went dark.
The last recorded lighthouse entries were made on 15 December.
It wasn’t until 26 December that the lighthouse tender Hesperus finally reached the island but there was no response from the keepers.
A relief keeper climbed towards the lighthouse and found that the men were gone.
Searches of the island found evidence of severe storm damage around one of the landing areas, but there was no sign of Ducat, Marshall or McArthur.
The official investigation reached a tragic but logical conclusion.
The men had probably gone outside during dangerous conditions, perhaps attempting to secure equipment being damaged by the storm. A powerful wave may then have swept them off the island.
Their bodies were never recovered.
Over the decades, however, the mystery grew stranger.
Stories emerged of an untouched meal sitting on the table, a mysteriously overturned chair and strange final diary entries describing terrified lighthouse keepers praying during a storm.
Some of those famous details appear to have been added to the story later but the real mystery doesn’t need them.
Three experienced lighthouse keepers disappeared from an isolated island in December 1900.
Nobody witnessed what happened.
And more than a century later, nobody can say with absolute certainty how their final moments unfolded.
Sometimes an empty lighthouse is scarier than any ghost.
Read more on Paranormal Globe: The Vanishing Keepers of Flannan Isles Lighthouse
7. The Devil’s Footprints
A drawn record of the Devil’s Footprints.
During the night of 8–9 February 1855, heavy snow covered parts of Devon.
When residents woke the following morning, something strange had apparently crossed the landscape.
Thousands of unusual prints were reported in the snow.
Many appeared roughly hoof-shaped and travelled in what looked like a single line.
Reports claimed that the tracks stretched through towns and the countryside, crossing gardens, rooftops, walls and other obstacles.
They became known as the Devil’s Footprints and newspapers quickly picked up the story.
Some residents apparently wondered whether Satan himself had walked through Devon during the night.
But more rational explanations soon appeared.
Could mice, rats or other animals hopping through deep snow have created unusual patterns?
Perhaps several different animals created tracks which were later mistakenly treated as one continuous trail.
Weather conditions could also have distorted ordinary footprints as snow melted and refroze.
Other theories have ranged from escaped animals to atmospheric phenomena and elaborate hoaxes.
There probably wasn’t one single trail travelling uninterrupted across Devon in the way the story is sometimes told today.
But historical correspondence confirms that unusual tracks genuinely were being discussed and investigated at the time.
What exactly created them? After almost 172 years later, we still don’t really know.
But if you ever wake after a night of heavy snow to find a line of strange hoof-like footprints running past your window and over rooftops, perhaps its best that you don’t follow them.
8. The Dyatlov Pass Incident
The hikers heading to Dyatlov Pass, never to return
Few unexplained mysteries have generated as many theories as the Dyatlov Pass incident.
In early 1959, a group of 10 experienced hikers led by Igor Dyatlov set out across the northern Ural Mountains.
One turned back early and the other nine would never return.
When search teams eventually located their tent, they discovered something baffling.
The tent had apparently been cut open from the inside.
Footprints led away into the snow.
The hikers appeared to have abandoned their shelter, clothing and equipment despite dangerously low temperatures.
Their bodies were subsequently discovered at several locations.
Some had died from hypothermia and others suffered serious traumatic injuries.
The bizarre circumstances created decades of speculation.
An avalanche.
Military experiments.
Infrasound.
Secret weapons.
A violent confrontation.
And maybe even yetis or UFOs.
The Soviet investigation concluded that the hikers had been killed by an overwhelming natural force, but the vague explanation did little to end speculation.
Modern scientific research has provided a much more convincing possibility.
A 2021 study demonstrated how a relatively small slab avalanche could potentially have occurred at the campsite after wind-blown snow accumulated above the tent.
Such an event could explain why the hikers suddenly evacuated and why some suffered severe injuries.
Other research and later investigations have strengthened the avalanche theory.
That doesn’t mean every minute of the tragedy can be reconstructed with certainty.
Nobody survived to explain exactly what happened.
But Dyatlov Pass is a useful reminder that mysterious doesn’t always mean paranormal.
The final hours of those nine hikers were almost certainly terrifying.
The most frightening explanation may simply be that they were trapped in one of the most hostile environments on Earth when everything went catastrophically wrong.
Halloween reading: Donnie Eichar’s Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident explores the mysterious deaths of the nine hikers and the theories surrounding what happened to them.
10. The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter
A reconstruction of the incident at the farmhouse in rural Kentucky.
I will finish this Halloween collection with something slightly different.
No haunted house.
No ghost.
Just a terrified family claiming strange creatures surrounded their farmhouse in rural Kentucky.
On the evening of 21 August 1955, members of the Sutton family and their friends were gathered at a farmhouse near Kelly, Kentucky.
One of the men, Billy Ray Taylor, went outside to collect water and he returned with an extraordinary story.
Taylor claimed he had seen a bright object streak across the sky and descend nearby.
Not long afterwards, the family dog began barking.
Then something approached the house.
Witnesses described a small humanoid creature with an oversized head, large glowing eyes and unusually long arms.
The frightened occupants grabbed their guns as more creatures reportedly appeared.
For several hours, the family claimed the that beings approached windows and doors while gunfire repeatedly drove them back.
Eventually, the terrified group piled into their vehicles and drove to the police station in nearby Hopkinsville.
Officers who responded found an extremely frightened group of people.
Police searched the property but found no alien visitors.
The strange siege became known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter and remains one of the most famous close-encounter cases in UFO history.
A popular sceptical explanation proposes that the witnesses encountered great horned owls, whose large reflective eyes, round heads and defensive behaviour could appear extremely strange at night, particularly to already frightened people.
Perhaps that is exactly what happened.
But imagine yourself inside that isolated farmhouse.
It’s dark.
Something has just appeared at the window.
And whatever you think you saw the first time… it has come back.
Was it Owls or aliens?
You can decide which explanation lets you sleep more easily this Halloween.
Which Paranormal Story Frightens You the Most?
From violent poltergeists in ordinary British homes to three lighthouse keepers who simply vanished, these stories have survived because they leave us with something every good Halloween tale needs.
A question that hasn’t been completely answered.
Some cases almost certainly have natural explanations while others may have grown and become exaggerated through decades of retelling.
And sometimes, investigators simply don’t have enough evidence to confidently explain what happened.
That doesn’t prove ghosts, poltergeists, witches or extraterrestrials were responsible, but it leaves just enough uncertainty to keep us wondering.
And on Halloween night, perhaps wondering is half the fun.
Have you experienced something you couldn’t explain?
You can submit your paranormal sighting or story to Paranormal Globe and tell us what happened.
And if you’re looking for more real-life ghost stories, haunted locations and unexplained mysteries this Halloween, just take a look around and explore more from Paranormal Globe.
Ever wondered where our Halloween traditions began? Discover the origins of Halloween and how the celebration evolved over the centuries.
Happy Halloween!
Enjoy Paranormal Globe?
Add us as a Preferred Source on Google to see more latest stories in Google Search.
About the Author: Paul Nichol
