Campfire listeners love to hear about hauntings. Well, here you go! All hauntings all the time on this all new edition of Campfire. Enjoy!

TRANSCRIPT

You want hauntings? We’ve got hauntings on this all-haunting Campfire.

Welcome to our gathering tonight. Here we share stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things. Sit back, relax, and warm yourself by Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again, and thank you for joining us on the Campfire. This is the show where we share true stories of the supernatural. UFOs, ghosts, cryptic creatures, headscratchers – whatever the stories are, they are true and they are amazing, and today they’re I think pretty much exclusively all hauntings. We had a session maybe eight or nine days ago where every call was a haunting. It was like, you know what? I am going to just put them all together and we’re just going to have an all-haunting Campfire, and that’s what we have.

If you like what we do here, please rate, review, and follow or subscribe – that’s so important – on the podcast app of your choice. We appreciate it. And with no further ado, we will get right to these great Campfire stories.

KAT is on the line from Oregon. We’re so glad to have her with us today. She’s been listening since 2017. She’s going to take us back to 2011, when she was living alone in her grandparents’ house and the strangeness that ensued. KAT, welcome to the show, and please tell us what happened.

KAT: Thanks. This happened, like you said, back in 2011. I was living in my hometown of Idaho and my grandparents had a second home in Arizona. They were snowbirds. So at this time they were living in Arizona, and they offered for me to live in their house in Idaho, rent-free, only paying utilities, so of course I jumped at the opportunity. I moved in there during the winter. The water had been off for a while; my grandpa told me that I needed to go and flush all the toilets to get the water going again.

Their house had always felt very creepy to me, especially in the sitting room and upstairs. When I went around to all the bathrooms, I started downstairs and quickly moved through the bathrooms because they just felt so creepy. I got to the stairs, which was right next to the sitting room, and had to run up the stairs because I felt like I was being chased. I skipped every other step to try and get up the stairs as fast as I possibly could.

I got to the first bathroom on the second floor and I flushed that toilet quickly, and then the last bathroom was in my grandparents’ bedroom. So I mustered up my courage and went into their bedroom, quickly went to the bathroom and flushed the toilet, and I just felt like something was behind me. I turned around, and you know that feeling when you turn around and you feel like you’re going to run into somebody? That’s the feeling that I got.

I jumped and gasped because there in the doorway was this very tall shadow man. Broad shoulders. He filled the entire doorframe.

JIM: Oh my.

KAT: He had a round wide-brimmed hat and a long coat, very similar to what everybody describes as the Hat Man.

JIM: Yes.

KAT: I was terrified, and I didn’t know what to do. My first thought was to close my eyes and count to 10, so that’s what I did. I closed my eyes, I counted to 10, and then I looked first back up into the mirror to see if I could still see anything there. Luckily, there was nothing there. I immediately ran out of the bedroom and into my room across the hallway.

It was the scariest experience I’ve ever had because it felt like he was staring right at me in a disapproving way. But he had no face. It was totally black. This was during the day, so I could see the daylight behind him, but he was just totally black, filling the entire doorframe. It was terrifying. But luckily, I moved out of there pretty quickly and only had to go back for a little while when I was living with my now-husband. We moved back in there for only a couple months and then left, and luckily nothing else happened there. But it was terrifying.

JIM: We know it’s possibly a shadow person, Hat Man, which is amazing in and of itself. But what do you think the genesis of the haunting was? Do you have any ideas on that?

KAT: I do not know. Like I said, the house always felt creepy. I wasn’t in any bad place during this time; it was a good time in my life. So I don’t know what attracted it or what caused it. Yeah, I have no idea what it could’ve been.

JIM: Well, I’ve got to tell you, that’s frightening. See, you’ve got more guts than me, because you went back and stayed there. I would’ve been out of there so fast. I’m like – you’re too young to remember this, but there used to be this old actor, Don Knotts. The guy played Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. He did a movie called The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. (He was Mr. Chicken, by the way.) The thing is that I could just see myself as that. I’m a total coward. I don’t want to see the Hat Man. [laughs] So kudos to you for having a lot of intestinal fortitude.

When you saw the Hat Man or the shadow person, some people describe it as so dark it looks like a hole is cut into the universe. Was that the way for you?

KAT: Yeah, that’s exactly how it was. It was blacker than black, for sure.

JIM: Wow, that is a scary situation. Thank you so much, KAT, for sharing it with us and being a part of the Campfire.

KAT: Thank you, Jim. Bye.

JIM: Kelly is on the line from Ontario, Canada. So glad to have her with us. Had a little tech issue, but she persevered, and she said she’s been listening so long she doesn’t even know how long she’s been listening. That means a long time, so we thank her. She’s going to tell us a little bit about the strangeness in the townhouse where she raised her family. Kelly, welcome to the show, and tell us what happened.

KELLY: Thank you for the introduction. That was great.

Back in 2012, my husband and I moved into this little townhouse with my husband and our three sons. For the first couple of years there, it was relatively quiet. I think I was so busy with babies that I didn’t really realize if there were oddities or anything strange going on because I was doing the mom thing. We noticed random things – a weird shadow out of the corner of our eye or a strange sound – but we just chalked it up to living in the townhouse complex. But we found out pretty quick that our neighbors were really quiet and we had really solid walls, so we didn’t hear much from them.

Then, when my youngest was about two and a half or three, he started talking about his “other mommy.”

JIM: Oh boy. [laughs] I’m sorry to laugh, but that’s kind of creepy.

KELLY: It is. We live in a mining town, and he talked about being in a mining area with lots of rocks and stuff. The whole thing was just really strange. There were a few things he mentioned – but my husband and I don’t really ignore conversations like that, so we tried to talk to him about it. We didn’t really push it. But that was it; it just sort of fizzled out.

We didn’t really hear more about “other mommy,” but that’s when things started to get kind of weird in the house. We started noticing more shadows, and we noticed that doors would creak open. But you have three kids running around the house, animals, I guess that stuff happens.

But then one night, I was home alone with my two youngest, who would’ve been under five at the time, and my husband was at baseball with my oldest. It was about 10:00 in the evening and I was working on my computer in my living room, and I had my back to our stairs, and suddenly I hear, “Mummy?” I spun around, fully expecting to see one of my kids standing behind me, and there was nobody there. I was like, okay, not a big deal. Maybe they’re sitting on the stairs or something, maybe waiting at the top of the stairs or something for me.

Our stairs were closed in; they weren’t open stairs, so you couldn’t see up the stairs. So I walked over to the stairs and I looked, and there was nobody there. I then raced up the stairs, thinking that they were tricking me or they’d gone back to bed, trying to KATch them in the act. I raced up the stairs and both kids were fast asleep in their beds.

I was literally just one giant goosebump. I called my husband, I called my mother, I called my sister. I was freaking out until he got home, of course.

About a month later, my husband pulled me aside one morning and he said, “Kelly, something really weird happened last night.” He woke up around 3:00 in the morning and he went downstairs to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. All of a sudden, behind him, he hears, “Daddy!” And he spun around and there was no one there.

Thankfully that was the last time we ever heard voices, but then things started moving in the house.

JIM: Oh boy.

KELLY: It was an escalation, for sure. One day my eldest was doing dishes in the kitchen, and there’s this half-wall that separates our kitchen and our living room. He was washing dishes, and all of a sudden this cup fell off the counter. He swears he didn’t touch it or knock it. And I mean, it’s to be expected with kids, but the weird part was we were finding glass around the corner of the wall and well into the living room, so it’s like it just exploded. It wasn’t just a drop. It literally exploded and we were finding glass way across the room. So that was strange.

There were so many little things that were happening around the house that some of my friends started asking about our “haunted townhouse saga.” One time, when I was chatting with a friend, her phone autocorrected “ghost” to “Josie,” and then from there forward we just called her “Josie Ghostie,” which is a Never Been Kissed reference. [laughs] So that’s how she’s known now by our family and friends. Josie.

Last summer, we bought a house, and that’s when Josie started getting really annoyed with us. As we were packing, we noticed things were escalating in the house. One evening, my youngest and I were in the living room and we could see the basement door, and the handle on the door literally turned and the door creaked open – which had never, ever happened before.

Another time, we were cleaning and packing in the living room and I heard this weird noise in the kitchen. We had egg cartons on top of our fridge to give to my mom, waiting for her to pick them up, and we always had egg cartons up there for her. I had a clear view of the fridge, and the egg carton literally shifted to the right and dropped off the side of the fridge. Again, nothing had ever randomly just fallen off the fridge. And it wasn’t just like something had knocked. It literally shifted to the side and dropped.

And then finally, I was in the living room; my husband was doing dishes in the kitchen. It was late at night and the kids had gone to bed. So he’s doing dishes and we’re chatting about our day. He had dirty dishes on the counter beside him and he was washing the other dishes, and all of a sudden this mug literally lifted up off the counter, probably about an inch, shifted, and dropped straight to the ground. It didn’t rattle. It dropped face-down. It didn’t break. It didn’t move.

We just stopped and stared at each other with our jaws wide open because it’s unbelievable, right? Egg cartons falling off, doors opening, those things can be explained, but to literally watch a mug rise up and drop to the ground – I mean, it’s just mind-blowing.

We figured Josie was not happy with us, and we told her that she could come live with us in our new house. But we’ve been there for almost a year and we’ve yet to hear or see anything from her.

But to finish my story off, we got a message from our neighbors at the townhouse about a week after we had moved, and she asked if we’d still been going over to the house, if we were cleaning, if we’d been there at all. I said, “No, no, we’ve totally left. What’s up?” She said, “Well, we’ve been hearing banging on the walls.” It’s weird because it’s always been quiet. We’d been there for 10 years; it was always quiet. So they’d been hearing banging on the walls, and then that night, she had gone grocery shopping and she got home relatively late – it was dark out – and she pulled into her parking spot and looked up at the townhouses, and where my children’s room was, she saw a figure of an adult standing in the window of the room.

JIM: Oh boy. That’s frightening.

KELLY: It’s very frightening. And my little guy used to talk about things being in his room, but I just dismissed it as kid things. The next day she contacted our landlord to see if they’d been doing any cleaning or renovations in our unit, and they hadn’t. No one had been in the unit since we had moved out. It was on the docket, but they hadn’t done it yet. So that’s my Josie Ghostie story. [laughs]

JIM: What do you think was the genesis of this haunting? You said the neighbor said things had been quiet, and then it sounds like things ramped up once you guys moved in? Is that the point?

KELLY: I don’t know. I think I mentioned in my email to you that I had another story; I kind of think that spirits maybe – not necessarily follow me, but I definitely think I’m sensitive. I’ve had a few instances with some creepier sightings and creepier things happening to me. I don’t know if it’s me; I don’t know if it’s something that’s followed me. I don’t know if I’ve just always been too busy to notice. I think we get so caught up in our day-to-day life that we’re not really sensitive to the things that are happening. Maybe if we take a moment and calm down and listen, we do hear them. I don’t know.

Nothing ever seemed full of malice with the townhouse ghost, other than opening doors and stuff. But nothing ever seemed like they were trying to hurt us. So I don’t know. Maybe people in the past have had experiences. I’m just not sure. But nothing so far. Whatever it was hasn’t followed me yet.

JIM: Kelly, that was an amazing story. Can’t wait for you to come back on the show and tell us the rest of the story. In the meantime, I do want to do one thing, though. You had mentioned offline to me that your kids, Colton and Bowen, are big fans of the show, so I wanted to say to Colton and Bowen: stay spooky, and a spooky shout-out to you. Kelly, thanks so much for being a part of the Campfire.

KELLY: Thank you.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM: A Campfire veteran, a return caller is on the line, Amanda from New York. She has a cross between a haunted workplace and a haunted house story. You’ll know what I mean when she gets into it. Amanda, welcome back to the show from New York state. Look forward to hearing this story. Tell us what happened.

AMANDA: Thank you for having me again. I really appreciate it. My first story is I worked in a small liberal arts college here in New York’s Hudson Valley, and the program I worked within in this college had our offices in an old house that was actually used for one of the faculty members to live in.

This house was pretty remote on the campus. It was on one of the far edges of the campus. It was surrounded by woods, and we had a long dirt driveway leading into this house, and there was no outlet. Our house was at the end of this road; it was one way in, one way out. My desk was in the middle of this house, what must’ve been used as the old living room.

Typically I left at 5:00, the typical workday, but there were several times throughout the year during fundraising season where I would have to work late and prepare mailings and get everything done, so I’d often be there till 10:00 or 11:00 at night. It was a little scary because we were so secluded from the rest of the campus, and we did have the woods around us, and it was dark, and it was a house, so there were a lot of windows. I felt very exposed.

At the end of the road, it was just parking lots and other buildings, the science buildings and things that typically were not used that late at night, so I really did feel very alone back there. Didn’t like working late. There was a faculty member who often worked a little bit late too. I don’t want to use his real name, so we’ll call him Bill. He would work in one of the back rooms and KATch up on grading papers and things. I was always very happy when he was there for the company, just knowing that there was another person there.

It got to the point where I felt so uncomfortable after he left that I asked him to start locking the door behind him when he left, just so I felt a little added layer of security. Because when he did leave, I would hear movement in those back rooms. It sounded like someone shuffling around. I would hear some footsteps. I would hear a low murmuring male voice. But I was alone. I used to just turn up my computer music very loud and drown it out. I would often feel like there was someone behind me, and I never turned around and looked; I just kept my head down and did what I needed to do.

This one particular night, though, the activity got really intense. Bill was there, and he left. We said our goodbyes. Then shortly after that, I could hear him talking in the back room. He had a very low, distinctive voice, and I could hear a low male voice speaking. I couldn’t make out the words, but it was definitely a conversation, and I could hear, again, the movements and the footsteps and the walking around. I assumed that when I had gone into the printer room or to the bathroom, he must’ve come back in to do some more work, so I didn’t really think a whole lot of it. I could hear coughing and throat clearing.

But then I realized it didn’t feel right, so I yelled his name – “Bill, are you here?” No response. It’d get quiet. Then I was like, oh, that’s kind of weird. Then it would pick up again. So finally I went and checked the front door to make sure it was locked, and it was. I looked out of the windows and realized his car was gone. My car was the only one there, so I was the only one in the house, despite hearing a male voice.

As I was walking back to my desk, I realized none of the lights in those back rooms were on. I was like, oh gosh, I really am alone and I really am hearing all this and experiencing this. But I couldn’t leave. I had to finish this work.

It just felt very oppressive in there. Not necessarily scary, but just not right. Something was definitely off. And then the housekeeper came. The housekeeper came through and emptied garbages and cleaned the bathrooms and ran the vacuum quickly, and I noticed every time she came in, she had earbuds in, so we never really interacted. We just said hello. She did her thing quickly and would leave. But again, I was always grateful for her company.

That particular night, I asked her if she ever had any experiences, and she said, “Oh yeah, every time I’m in here. That’s why I wear the earbuds. I don’t want to hear it, so I just cancel it out. I assume that’s why you always have your music on.” I asked her what she’d experienced, and she described the same thing. A low male voice, footsteps, sounds of movement. So that was that.

I ended up leaving shortly after. I was able to rationalize not getting that work done that night. It just didn’t feel good to be there. And I did ask a colleague when I went into the office during normal hours the next time, and she said that other people have had experiences like that, but it wasn’t something that was talked about because most of the people in the office weren’t really believers in that sort of thing, so it’s kind of kept on the downlow.

So that was that. It was pretty intense to hear a voice and movement and really believe someone was in there with me, but to discover I was alone.

JIM: Do you feel that it was because this place was so dear to this professor that he was reliving it? Do you think it was an active haunting? Do you think it was a residual replay? What are your thoughts?

AMANDA: I don’t know. The other woman I spoke with, we did think he was probably there because that was his home and it was actually named after him, that building. When it was converted into our office building, we used his last name to name the building. So that’s how it was identified on maps and all around campus. I don’t know if he felt a connection that way. I really don’t know if it was residual.

The thing that makes me pause on that a little bit is that when I did call out my colleague’s name to see if he was still there, it did stop, and then it would start up again and then stop when I called the name. So it seemed to be a little responsive. I’m really not sure.

JIM: Very, very interesting indeed. A great story. Again, you think about these people who give large swaths of their lives to institutions and you’ve really got to believe that if there were going to be a residual haunting, for example, or if there were going to be a place that is dear to someone, these kind of people – or I’ve heard stories of physicians who have been seen after their death – it would make a ton of sense.

AMANDA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he lived there, he taught there. It was his life, apparently. It takes real dediKATion to be a college professor, that’s for certain.

JIM: Yeah, especially if you’re really into it and you do a good job. It’s quite a calling, just like any other avoKATion and voKATion like that.

AMANDA: Absolutely.

JIM: Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story once again, Amanda, on the Campfire.

AMANDA: Thank you, Jim. It was a lot of fun as usual. Appreciate it. 

JIM: Next up on the Campfire is Nancy from Southern California. We’re so glad to have her on the line. She found out about us from our friends Scott and Forrest over at Astonishing Legends. If you haven’t checked them out, please do. Nancy is going to tell us about – well, she was a newlywed and she moved into her first house, and it may not have been exactly what she was expecting. Nancy, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Tell us about this haunted honeymoon house.

NANCY: Haunted indeed. I’m going to preface the story by saying that I grew up in a series of houses that were always very active in a paranormal way, so I was used to the bumps in the night, the weird noises, that sort of stuff. That was the norm for me, so it didn’t really spook me anymore.

But we moved into this new house and we gutted the entire house. It needed a complete renovation. I mean everything – kitchen, bathrooms, floors, everything went out. We owned it for a couple months before we actually moved into it. I that process, we got it ready to move in. Finally we moved into the house, and I don’t remember how long it had been after we moved in, but I started hearing noises at night.

And I recognized them because they were very similar to what I had heard in my childhood home. What it sounded like was if somebody drags the chairs from the dining room table across, that noise it makes. So I knew that noise. The clanking of glass, I knew that noise. And then it started getting louder and louder, and at one point it sounded like somebody was taking my pots and pans and lifting them above their head and dropping them on the ground. It was loud.

My husband never heard them. He slept the whole time, so he never heard it. I would hear it, and it got to a point where I was like, gosh, here we go again. But again, I’m not going to get spooked. It’s fine. As long as it stays in the kitchen, I’m good. My room was the last one down the hall, so I was far enough away where I wasn’t too concerned with it.

One night, we were both asleep, my husband was next to me, and for whatever reason I got that urge to wake up. I don’t know if in my sleep I felt like someone was staring – I don’t know what it was. But I know I woke up, I looked to the foot of my bed, and there was this man just standing there.

JIM: Oh boy.

NANCY: Yeah. He was like a greenish mist, but I could see him. I could see the detail on his shirt. It was a plaid shirt. I could see he was wearing pants. I would guess khaki pants, like dress pants. He was a tall man, kind of broad. I didn’t recognize him. I had never seen him before. I couldn’t place him. No clue who he was. I remember just staring at him and he’s looking at me and I’m looking at him and I’m like, oh my God. [laughs] I covered my face with my blanket and I turned and got closer to my husband and I prayed, like, “He needs to go away. I can’t see this. This is not okay.”

A couple seconds later, which felt like an eternity, I uncovered my head and he was gone. I said, okay. The next morning I woke up and my husband left the house. I was by myself and I had a talk with him. I said, “Hey, look, I get it. We’re going to live here together. That’s fine, but here are the rules. You stay in the kitchen at night. You cannot come in my bedroom. Absolutely not. You’re not allowed. It’s not okay. We’re going to have problems if you do that again.”

JIM: Laying down the law.

NANCY: Seriously. Because again, I’m used to this. It’s not that big of a deal. I said, “The door’s closed at night. It’s going to be closed. You can’t come in. It’s not okay. You stay on your side, I stay on my side, we coexist, everybody’s happy.” And that was fine. After that I never saw him again. I closed the door, so I really didn’t hear the noises in the kitchen anymore. Nothing ever bothered me again. I never had another issue.

We lived there for about a year and a half, maybe two years, and then we moved out. We moved out of the house and it turned into a rental. When we were renting the house, it was a young family; they had three young kids. They moved in and everything was fine. They had been there for a couple months, no issues. Then one day I got – I don’t remember if it was a call or a text, but the wife contacted me and said, “Hey, I have a really weird question to ask you.” I said, “Okay, what’s the question?” She asked, “When you guys lived here, was there anything weird? Did you guys have any scary things happen?”

I hesitated to answer because I was like, “How does this go?” [laughs] I said, “Well, there were some weird noises” – I never told her I saw anybody because I thought that’s just me. Then she said, “Okay, yes, that makes sense. Somebody’s scaring the kids and we’re hearing a lot of weird noises at night and we don’t know where they’re coming from.” I said, “Yeah, I heard weird noises.” I didn’t have kids at the time so I didn’t have that issue. She said, “Do you mind if I have my grandma bless the house?” “No, not at all. You’re the one who lives there.” 

So she had the house blessed, and then I never heard anything else about it. We’ve had several tenants live in that house since. No issues. Nobody has ever brought it up again, so he must’ve left.

JIM: Very, very interesting. I love where you laid down the law there because I’ve always felt when I see different – I won’t mention any names; people know who it is. But when you see the paranormal investigators on TV and they come into a place that’s supposedly haunted and they provoke and they yell and they scream, I think that’s very disrespectful because if there are indeed spirits living there, they’re living there. You wouldn’t go in somebody’s house and do that. Somebody would be carrying you out, right?

NANCY: Right.

JIM: So why would you do that to the spirits? On the other hand, the spirits have to respect you too.

NANCY: There’s got to be boundaries, and they go both ways.

JIM: Exactly. And I have heard multiple times – I do believe there’s different kinds of hauntings. I think some of them are more sinister and some are more innocuous. I do believe that. I think there are things that if you told them to leave alone, they’d just do a cosmic “ha!” and do what they wanted to. But it seems to me, just based on stories I’ve heard from many people, that if you respectfully but firmly say, “Hey, this is a boundary and you can’t cross it,” they seem to listen.

NANCY: I think so. That was my experience in that house. Whoever he was, he was just living there. He was doing his thing, I was doing my thing, and we can coexist. That’s not an issue. Didn’t bother me. He wasn’t messing anything up. We had dogs; the dogs weren’t afraid. There were never any issues. I figured, “You just stay on your side, I stay on my side, everybody’s happy and we move on.”

JIM: There you go. Nancy, thank you for being part of the Campfire.

NANCY: Thank you.

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JIM: Long-time listener Beth is on the line from New Hampshire. We’ve had a lot of calls recently on this subject of haunted houses. She’s going to tell us about one she encountered when she was in her childhood. Beth, welcome to the show. Thank you for listening for all this time, and tell us your story.

BETH: Hi. Thank you, Jim. I’m going to tell you the story of my neighbors, the Martins, their house. I grew up in rural New Hampshire, and our neighbors were about a mile away through the woods. We had a path from our house to theirs, and their house was a huge old 1700s farmhouse, with the full wraparound porch. It was gorgeous. It was built in the 1700s, so it was really old.

The couple that lived there were elderly. They were retired, and they needed some help with basic home tasks and yard tasks, so they hired me and my siblings to come and do those things. As soon as we were old enough to have our first job, we went and worked for the Martins.

I was around 12 when I started working there. I am an empath, but being 12, I had no idea of that. I always felt weird in the house. I always felt like somebody was watching me or that there was someone else in the room with me. But there was nothing that I could say “oh, this house is haunted.” I hadn’t had any actual experiences that I could say were hard truth, “I had an experience,” until one day I was over at their house working during a snowstorm.

You know when it’s snowing really hard and everything is quiet because it’s been snowing? That was what it was like. Everything was quiet. The house was quiet. I’m just standing there in the family room, ironing sheets and clothes, and I’m facing a door that leads outside. It leads to the garage of their home. When you exit that door, there’s a hallway between the house and the garage. At the end of that hallway is an old wooden door that latches with a hook and eye, and it leads to the backyard.

I’m just ironing away, quietly, and I hear that wooden door slam open, slam shut, and then I hear footsteps walk down the hallway. Then I hear the sound of someone kicking the snow off their boots against the door. Then I see the door handle turn and the door opens. I’m not worried. It’s obviously Mr. Martin coming in from the backyard. So I’m standing there expectantly, waiting for him to come in, and he doesn’t. And he still doesn’t.

Now I’m starting to get a little concerned that he hasn’t entered the house. After about 15 or 20 seconds, I hear him talking all the way on the other side of the house with his wife. They were having their morning tea. Nobody was at that door.

Then I got real nervous because I had to go and shut the door. I go over and I look, and I can see that the exterior door, the wooden door, is still latched with the hook and eye and there’s no snow in the hallway or by the door. So that was my experience with the haunted house.

And then when we grew a little bit more, my brother ended up living there in his late teens, early twenties, and he was staying there as the caretaker for the house. He was there for a couple of years. He had a ton of experiences. Do you want me to tell you about those?

JIM: Yeah, please do.

BETH: He stayed there after the husband died and the wife decided to move to an assisted living home in Massachusetts near her kids. He was there to facilitate the process of putting all the land in conservation and then selling the house. He ended up being there about two years, and when he started living there he was all the way on the third floor in the servants’ quarters, staying in those rooms. It was like a little apartment. But he had some unsettling experiences up there. He never really told me what happened upstairs; just that it was enough to make him want to move downstairs.

Then he had a very informative experience for him. He was in the shower one day and he heard his name being sing-songed from downstairs. He’s in the shower and he just hears, “Traaa-vis!” So he hops out of the shower, yells down the stairs, “I’m in the shower!” and then goes back to showering. He did that three or four times before he finally was like, “I’m getting out of the shower and going to figure out why my girlfriend is calling me.” He got downstairs and there was no one there. He ended up leaving the house and not returning until his girlfriend got home because he was so unsettled.

He also had an experience where he was in the original bathroom to the home and he heard a little girl giggle at him, and that was pretty scary. It was like she was right there. He had lots of doors that were completely locked and could only be opened from the inside found open. He, too, had that door that I had my experience – it opened even when it was locked. It would end up opening. He always told himself it was just he wind because that was a lot easier than accepting that some unseen force was opening the door.

By the time he left that house, he was living in the family room exclusively. He did not use the rest of the house because he was so scared of it.

JIM: Wow. Obviously you were younger and everything, but do you have any theories on what was going on over there?

BETH: Just the senses that I got, I felt like there was something to do with the servants maybe still hanging about. I definitely think that there must’ve been a homeowner. My experience felt very comfortable, like “I live here, I own this place, this is what I do every day.” My brother did tell me recently that he had been told that the homeowner – the Martins, one of their mothers had died on the third floor. I had said to him, back when he told me “I’m living on the third floor,” “There’s a dead lady up there! Why are you sleeping up there?” And he only recently confirmed that for me, that someone had died upstairs.

So we don’t have a lot of history. The really sad thing is when the house finally got sold, the new owners tore it down and built a mansion. So the house isn’t even there anymore.

JIM: Interesting. Very interesting. I’ve got to tell you, just today, the calls I’ve taken, haunted houses are a thing. It’s always interesting to hear from people who have lived in one or spent a lot of time in one. I don’t know that I would want to live in one, but it’s interesting.

BETH: I’m with you.

JIM: Interesting to sit behind the mic here safely – I think – and listen to these stories. Thank you so much for joining us tonight on the Campfire. 

BETH: Yeah, no problem. Also, today is my brother Travis’s birthday, so can I just say happy birthday to him.

JIM: Happy birthday to Travis, and a spooky shout-out to him. Stay spooky, Travis. Thanks, Beth.

BETH: Thank you.

JIM: KRISTI is on the line from Southern California. We’re so glad to have her on the show. She says that she enjoys listening to the Campfire and the Paranormal Podcast on her commute. From someone who commuted for many years, I know how painful that can be, so if we can ease that pain just a little bit with some spooky stories, I’m glad for it. Christie, this sounds interesting. She’s going to tell us about a haunted sleepover. Christie, thank you for joining us and please tell us about this haunted sleepover.

KRISTI: Thanks, Jim. This happened way back in the mid-’80s when I was a college student. We got into some shenanigans one evening. My roommate’s parents had a local newspaper in a small town near our school, and offices loKATed in an old house that was built probably in the early 1900s. My roommate’s family always said it was haunted and that they had a lot of weird experiences there. We were a little bit skeptical about that, but we found out what the story was about.

Her dad told us that he used to hear a lot of activity in the back of the house when he was working late at night, because he had print deadlines. He would just call out to whoever was there and say, “Hey, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Could you guys quiet down back there and leave me alone?” Then, according to him, things would calm down. He could get back to work and get his deadline met and all that.

One weekend, my roommate and her sister and me and a couple other people decided we were going to spend a night in the house and find out if it was haunted or not. This was right after the first Ghostbusters movie came out, so we were all fired up to find out what was going on. So we drove over to the house and we had our sleeping bags and our pillows, and we got everything set up in the living room, just goofing around, doing what college girls do.

We ordered some pizza. When we went to pick up the pizza, one of us had the brilliant idea to get a Ouija board. I think it might’ve been me. I’m not sure. I know I was on the pizza run.

JIM: Uh-oh. Christie!

KRISTI: I know. [laughs] Don’t do it. So we got the pizza, we got the Ouija board, we came back, and of course immediately got the Ouija board out and started asking questions. “Who’s here?”, “What are you doing?”, “What’s this about?” – basically being complete idiots, like the college kids that we were.

I’ve never had an experience like that before. I could feel the energy coming up my arms and my hands when we were using the board. I think it’s called the planchette – it was moving on its own. I was watching, and nobody’s hands were touching it. It was really freaky. And it was answering our questions for about maybe 20 minutes, half an hour. Then it stopped, and we all laughed about it, thinking it probably just got tired of us being so darn annoying.

We heard weird noises and stuff. We didn’t know if it was KATs or rodents or whatever. But otherwise, it was at that point relatively uneventful. As it got later, we settled down. My friend’s parents called to check in on us, and they thought it was really funny they woke us up and scared the heck out of us and asked if we’d seen any ghosts yet. At that point, we were a little bit unnerved. [laughs] We all had a hard time going back to sleep.

One of the girls that was there had an especially hard time. She was having a really hard time going back to sleep, settling down. Actually, I asked her about what happened to concur our stories together, and she said she was worried that she’d be the only one awake if something spooky happened. It was pretty funny. But we kind of all at the same time decided we were feeling really uncomfortable, and we decided to leave.

So we got our stuff together and locked the door behind us, and we were out on the front porch. We loaded up our cars, and somebody realized – I don’t remember who it was – that they had left a pillow in the house. So we went back to the porch and unlocked the front door, but it wouldn’t open. It was really weird. The lock seemed to be working okay, but the door wouldn’t open. We were like, “Okay, this is really freaky. We’re just going to go and we’ll come back later, the next day, for the pillow.”

In the morning, my roommate’s dad called us. He wanted to know what the heck we had done at the house. (His language was a little bit more colorful than that.) He couldn’t get the front door open. He went around to the back door, which was attached to the kitchen. Just a week prior to that, he’d put a new handle and a new lock on that door, so he’s like, “Okay, this’ll be fine.” Well, that lock wasn’t working either. The key just turned around in a 360-degree circle. It looked okay, but it just wasn’t working.

He actually ended up having to break the glass panes on that kitchen door to get in the house and reach his hand through and unlock it. When he finally got around to the living room, he found the front door was locked with the deadbolt. But we didn’t lock the deadbolt when we left. It was very strange. The deadbolt could only be locked from the inside of the house, and it was locked. We didn’t do it. There was no way for us to lock that door from where we were because the only way to bolt the door from the inside – let me repeat that. The bolt didn’t go to the outside, so you couldn’t lock or unlock the deadbolt from the outside. Somehow, on the inside of that house, when nobody was in there, the deadbolt got locked. That was really weird.

But it gets even weirder. They didn’t ever use the deadbolt because it didn’t work right. We actually talked about it when we were settling down for the night. The house was so old, the door was out of alignment, so if you popped out the bolt, it wouldn’t actually go into the hole in the doorframe. So somehow, with nobody in the house, that deadbolt got into the hole in the doorframe, and it normally wouldn’t work.

We were beyond freaked out when he was telling us this. He was kind of annoyed about the back door not working, but I think he was also really freaked out that the front door was bolted from the inside. He told us that nothing like that had ever happened in the house before. They’d had some weird activity, but nothing like the door locking from the inside. I think we probably ticked off whoever was hanging around. I don’t know. It didn’t want us back in the house. I just don’t know.

We went back to the house a couple years later to visit, and it was still creepy. We actually heard some weird noises when we were there in the back of the house, like in the bathroom and back patio. But as far as I know, there was no other issue with the front door lock. That probably was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.

JIM: I also wonder, since you guys were – I guess you’d be called teenagers, in college, young women, but you’re almost at that adolescent/teenage energy, and whatever it was – they say that with young people, places are more energized because of the inherent energy of young people. Do you think there’s anything to that?

KRISTI: That very well could be the case. I really don’t know.

JIM: Interesting.

KRISTI: It happened, and I don’t have any explanation for it.

JIM: Well, Christie, thank you so much for sharing your story tonight about a haunted sleepover.

KRISTI: Thanks, Jim. Stay spooky.

JIM: Stay spooky.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM: Long-time listener Beth is on the line from Pennsylvania. She’s going to tell us all about Jeremy. Beth, welcome to the show, and tell us – my goodness, who is Jeremy?

BETH: Thank you, Jim. It is an absolute pleasure to be on the Campfire, and it is definitely bucket list for me, so I’m glad to be a part of it.

JIM: Glad to have you here. Thank you so much.

BETH: Thank you. Jeremy is a little boy spirit that is believed to haunt the Farnsworth Inn, and my mother and I actually had a pretty crazy encounter with who we believe to be Jeremy. I won’t keep talking – well, I’m going to keep talking, but I’ll just cut to the chase and get started with my story.

When I was around the age of 12 years old, my mom and I took a trip to Gettysburg for our annual girls’ weekend. I grew up about two hours west of Gettysburg, so it was a fun and easy daytrip, and we loved to take it and spend the time together. We decided to book a room at the Farnsworth Inn, which is one of the original houses still standing from the Civil War. To this day, there are actually still more than 100 bullet holes on the brick walls from the Civil War. It’s still believed to be haunted by a number of spirits because it was a hospital following the battle.

Looking forward to a weekend filled with murder mystery dinners and ghost tours – I’ve always been into the paranormal, and my mom was the one that got me into that – we were hit with the worst snowstorm I can remember to date, and I’m 25 years old now. [laughs] I actually did a google search, and they had a name for this storm. They called it the North American Blizzard of 2008, which occurred at the same exact timeframe of this story, so it has to have been the same storm. Since you’re from Ohio, I’m sure you know how bad the snow can pile up on the East Coast. [laughs]

JIM: Oh yeah, sure.

BETH: I have some relatives from Chardon. It is horrible.

JIM: Oh yeah, snowbelt. [laughs]

BETH: Even what we think is bad here in PA is nothing compared to out there. So the snow began to fall about an hour into our arrival, and shortly after, our murder mystery dinner and ghost tour was cancelled. We got a phone call saying it was cancelled, and it left us sitting in what was formerly known – or it may still be known; I’m not sure, I’d have to double-check the website – as the Eisenhower Room. I know they sometimes change the room names and stuff. But little did we know this was the most haunted room at the Farnsworth, arguably. We didn’t know that at the time.

The room was not very large. It was cozy. It had a full bed and bath. The reason that that’s important is because of what’s to follow. The reason I’ll explain the room is because the bizarre chain of events that were about to happen – it just doesn’t make sense. Again, the room was not very large, it was cozy, it had a full bed and a bath, and there was not much room to walk around in. You sort of had to slide past each other to get to a certain part of the room. Again, it was titled the Eisenhower Room because of the former First Lady’s frequent visits to the hotel.

Being a “tweenager,” as I like to call it – I’m a teacher, so I see the behavior, and I will totally admit I was a total tweenager – I was angry and throwing a fit because our perfect weekend got cancelled and I was mad. My mom gave me an ultimatum and said, “If we leave now, we can try to beat the storm and have the rest of the weekend to relax,” because it was Friday. She said, “Our other option is to stay in the hotel and do absolutely nothing because all the shops are closed and everything is cancelled.”

I just lay on the bed, and I think I probably rolled my eyes. I had my little Nintendo DS, which, if there’s any listeners around my age, they’ll know that was the way it was back then. She took my tweenage silence for “Okay, I guess we’re leaving,” so she started cleaning up our belongings. All of a sudden she’s yelling at me, “Beth! Are you going to keep lying there? Are you going to get up and help?” I just looked and I was like, “I guess I have to get up.” So I took my data cartridge out, I set it on my bed for safekeeping, and I began to clean up my belongings.

After about five minutes, we were ready to go because again, we weren’t really there for that long. I said, “Hey Mom, I have to get my new game that you bought me. It’s sitting on the bed.” I go to grab the little cartridge and it’s gone. Completely gone. My mom starts with the typical, “Beth, have you lost that new game I just got you? Oh my God, I can’t believe you lost it already!” You know how moms are. I told her, “Mom, I swear it was right here.” 

This is when we cleaned house. I mean we ripped the whole entire room apart. We went to the bathroom, I checked the bathtub – I wasn’t even in the bathtub. I checked under rugs. We checked under the bed. We took all the sheets off the bed. We shook the sheets. Everything you can think of. We completely tore this room apart. And again, it wasn’t a very big room. So we take all the sheets off, put them back on the bed. My mom lays her head on the ground, literally lies on the ground and looks all under the bed. We try to do a complete scan underneath, and it’s nowhere to be found.

I’m like, “Mom, I swear I didn’t lose it!” At this moment, it hit me. I was like, wait a minute. When we arrived, the front desk lady mentioned about this little boy spirit named Jeremy. The background of Jeremy, he was a spirit that was believed to be one of the many hauntings of the Farnsworth Inn, but his death is very sad. He was actually playing an old game that I think they called “Chicken,” one of the ghost tours I took there mentioned. He was in front of the house and accidentally got run over by a horse and buggy.

JIM: Oh my.

BETH: It was very sad. Horrible death. They carried his body into the Farnsworth, and he actually died in his father’s arms just a couple of hours later, in a rocking chair that’s actually still in the hotel, which is pretty creepy. It’s believed that Jeremy’s spirit still haunts the hotel today, and he is somewhat of a prankster. People who stay there will report things going missing, apparitions of a boy appearing and disappearing, or random tricks that are being played.

I stopped in my tracks, and this is where I got really brave, Jim, because I was 12 years old, staying in a haunted hotel, and I was like, “You know what? I’m not getting in trouble over losing this game.” So I yelled out, “Jeremy, give it back!” I thought instantaneously it was going to show up, no problem. Nothing happened. I continued to look around the room. My mom is absolutely flabbergasted and cannot understand what happened from Point A to Point B, why it’s not here. I look around and I say, “Jeremy, give it back.” Still nothing.

Finally, for one final time, I looked around the room, I stood still, and I said, “Jeremy, give it back.” My mom comes out of the bathroom, we both turn around, and the game cartridge is in the middle of the floor, right where we both had our heads when we both looked under the bed. We look at each other, and it’s like a scene out of Scooby-Doo. [laughs] We’re like, “Let’s get outta here, Scoob!”

We grab our bag and the newly appearing game and we go to leave, but here’s the kicker. We try the doorknob and we’re locked in.

JIM: Oh boy.

BETH: This was back before cellphones were cool. Luckily, my mom and the phone number saved in her little flip phone. If the kids are listening, that’s what we used to use. [laughs] She was actually able to have it in her recent calls, so she was able to call the front desk. The front desk receptionist answered and said, “Oh my, okay, I will be right up.”

She makes the trip up, unlocks the door, but she’s white as a ghost. When she opens this door, this woman looks very uneasy. My mom and I ask, “Hey, what’s wrong?” She said, “The key was turned to locked on the outside of the door.” This wouldn’t be very creepy except it was one of those old-fashioned brass keys. We’re trying to rationalize this. We’re like, “Was there someone else in the hotel, like a worker or maybe a cleaning person that could have locked us in by mistake?” We assumed because of the weather they were probably locking up the inn and trying to get home because of the storm.

She looked at us and said, “That’s impossible because you two are the only ones staying in the hotel, and I’m the only worker here. Someone did not want you to leave.”

JIM: I wonder who that could be. [laughs]

BETH: We connected the dots because I’d said, “Jeremy, give it back.” We just assumed that because of my age – I was around the age of 12 – he was the one playing the trick on us. He didn’t want us to leave.

JIM: It makes sense. The fact that he gave it back but was like, “Okay, I’m not done with you guys yet. I’m going to have some more fun.” I think that happens, and I think sometimes with ghosts they can have a sense of humor and maybe a trickster thing. And since this was a little boy, that was just maybe in his makeup, you know what I’m saying?

BETH: Absolutely. Because he died so young, I’m sure he was in that mentality of “There’s no one else here to check on, and I don’t want them to leave, or even play tricks on.” It was a very cool experience, and I’m very happy to say that I have a Gettysburg ghost story. I’ve been back many times since and haven’t had anything else happen, but this one definitely sticks out. It’s a memorable experience my mom and I talk about all the time.

JIM: Beth, thanks so much for being a part of the Campfire.

BETH: Thank you so much, Jim. Stay spooky.

JIM: Peter is on the line from California. He found us from Reddit, and we love that when people spread the word in different ways. So hey, if you’re on Reddit, tell people about Jim Harold’s Campfire if it’s the appropriate place to do so. Peter does important work, working at a blood bank. We’ve had a lot of supernatural stories from workplaces, but not from a blood bank. So I’m very interested to hear this. Peter, welcome to the show, thank you for your support, and tell us what happened.

PETER: Hi, Jim. Thanks. Yeah, I never thought about calling in until you mentioned workplace stuff. I’ve always wanted a paranormal experience to happen to me my whole life and I never thought it would happen at work. Usually I don’t tell people about what’s happened at my workplace because I think most of the time people are scared about needles and donating blood.

JIM: Sure. And by the way, you should donate blood. It’s a good thing.

PETER: Definitely. Hopefully this can inspire people. Especially your type of listeners might get inspired to come in, hoping to experience something themselves.

JIM: A bonus. [laughs]

PETER: [laughs] Yes, a bonus, right. Blood, cookies, and a paranormal experience. I work as a donor center coordinator, so I do more front desk scheduling stuff for the blood bank. We moved into this building about eight years ago, and it was relatively quiet for a while, but three years after we moved in, we had coworkers who were saying they kept seeing a shadow figure. The lights would be off in the morning, but they would see somebody walking around in the back. I’m always trying to rule out the extraordinary first. It’s like, oh, maybe it’s a coworker or maybe a janitor or something who went out through the back door. So I was always skeptical at first.

But then one time it happened to me. I was sitting right there at my desk and there was a donor sitting on a chair with headphones on, and there were two coworkers standing next to this donor. The donor had headphones on; he was watching a movie while he was donating platelets. I heard this voice from around the corner that said, “So Peter…” I was waiting for this person to finish their sentence and I go, “Yes?” And they didn’t finish their sentence.

I looked at my two coworkers who were standing right across from me and said, “Who was that?” We had only one other coworker, Jackie, and she was way on the other side of the building. There was no follow-up to that sentence. I said, “Did you guys hear that?” They said, “Yeah, we heard it say your name.” I’m kind of a believer since that moment on.

Lots of people would experience stuff periodically, just random stuff. They’d see people or they would feel someone. That other coworker, Jackie, says that she’s sensitive because one time she was in our lunch breakroom and she was sitting there eating her lunch, and out of the corner of her eye she saw somebody walk into the room and sit down. But when she looked over at that seat, there was nobody there. She thought it was just some trick of the eye or something and continued with her lunch break.

But maybe about 10 minutes later, she saw I the periphery of her vision somebody stand up and walk out. So I guess they were having their lunch too or something, I don’t know. But she said that she felt like this was some kind of a female presence. She had a hat on or something. She couldn’t see clearly, but that was the impression she got.

I think it was even more confirmed – it was a Thursday afternoon. Everybody had left already, but I was stuck at work and my car wouldn’t start, so I was about to call AAA, towing. This girl pulls into our driveway. I was like, “Oh great, can you give me a jump?” So she helped jump my car, and I said, “Are you with the cleaners?” She’s like, “Yeah, my family does the custodial stuff here.” I go, “Oh my gosh, have you guys noticed any weird stuff going on lately?” She said, “No, ever since we moved in.” From the beginning she’s experienced it. We had only started to have stuff happen to us recently, but ever since we moved back into this building, she and her family – she would do the janitorial at night – have experienced stuff.

She said they would go into one of the back offices and there would be a lady there. Also confirming it was a female presence. They’d hear loud banging coming from parts of the building where no one would be there. I would leave notes for her whenever something new happened, and she would always leave notes on my desk for me in the morning about what happened that night when she was working.

JIM: Do you think it’s connected to the building itself, or something about the blood service? Maybe a possible former donor or volunteer? Or do you think it’s connected to the specific building?

PETER: I don’t know. Maybe just the building. I had a donor tell me once that he felt a presence too, which is a weird thing for a donor to tell us. But he said it wasn’t malevolent. I have no idea what it could be, this spirit hanging around. It doesn’t really give us any indiKATion of who it would’ve been or what kind of connection we had.

But speaking of donors, part of the blood donation process, we ask our donors several times what their name is, just to make sure we’ve got the right person and we type the blood correctly. But this donor, they asked her to repeat her name, and she had a unique name like “Katrice Juliano” or something. As soon as she said that, she heard this voice say, “Katrice Juliano,” and she looked up at the staff person and she’s like, “Did you say my name?” She’s like, “No, I didn’t.” She’s like, “Someone just said my name.” There wasn’t really anyone around.

We would hear our names being called every so often. We have three Marias who work at our workplace, but one of them goes by Angelica, and no one ever calls her Angelica at work, but she gets “Angelica” being called often. She looks around like, “Who’s calling me?”

Two last things. One is that one time we had this big blood drive event, and we had the custodial lady come in during the day to clean up because we had so many people coming through. She told us that one time she was cleaning the restroom, and in her ear she heard this voice tell her that she was leaving. Ever since that day, there hasn’t been too much activity. But that was about three years ago.

Just recently, maybe last month – after we do the health history, the physical screening in the room, we turn off the light and we usually have one of our volunteers use these alcohol wipes and wipe down the room because of Covid and everything. She said that while she was cleaning the room – it’s a very small room; it’s only two seaters – the door started closing on her. So she quickly comes out to tell me what happened, and I go back to investigate, and the door’s nice and stiff. It can’t just swing in on itself. Maybe this entity hadn’t left yet.

JIM: Do you guys consider it a nuisance, or do you think it kind of breaks up the day to have a paranormal experience at your place of work?

PETER: The second. We just find it amusing. We’ve named her Mary Jane, so whenever something weird happens we say, “Oh, it’s Mary Jane again.” We would talk like, “What are you having for lunch today?”, and we heard a voice once say, “Coffee.” We’re like, “Coffee for lunch? Who said that?” Mary Jane, I guess.

JIM: Well, please keep us updated on the exploits of Mary Jane, and thank you so much for doing the work that you do. Everybody, donate blood. Peter, thank you for being a part of the Campfire.

PETER: Thank you, Jim.

JIM: Up next on the Campfire, we have a special storyteller. She’s actually been a guest on some of our other shows. She’s a Reiki master, she’s a psychic, an author. We’re talking about Christi Clemons Hoffman. She’s in Missouri, and she says that her house is haunted by friendly ghosts, and she’s going to tell us about how they manifest themselves. Christi, good to talk to you. Tell us about these friendly ghosts.

CHRISTI: Thank you so much, Jim, for having me on. I really appreciate it. I’ve been wanting to do this for some time.

My house was built in 1920, so now it’s over 100 years old. The activity didn’t start right away; it started about a year or two after moving in. The first thing I remember happening is there being a large, loud crashing sound. My partner at the time heard it. He thought it was me and he came running upstairs to see if I was okay, but I didn’t hear anything. Apparently it sounded really dramatic downstairs.

About three or four times over the years, we’ve heard other crashes, the same type of thing, as if something is falling down that’s huge and crashing. And then when we go to look, there’s nothing there.

Also, we had a wireless doorbell that would go off randomly and pretty often, and many times when we were talking about the activity that we were experiencing, just as a way to say “Hello, yes, I’m here!” I finally had to take the batteries out of the doorbell because it was such a nuisance. I haven’t had a doorbell ever since.

Then there’s also music when we’re home. Whoever’s home alone hears music.

JIM: What kind of music?

CHRISTI: Ringing from 1920s style music up to the ’70s, coming from the walls. It’ll be different types of popular music. At first, when I heard it, the first few times I would go outside and investigate, like, “Gosh, who’s playing ’30s big band around my house?” Poke my head out and there’s nothing going on. It comes from the walls, and you can only hear it inside when you’re being quiet, not watching television, not talking on the phone, maybe reading or doing paperwork or something. It’s the only time you hear it. Weirdest thing. Of course, I hear that plaster walls will sometimes hold these vibrations, so that comes through.

And then some interesting stories. One morning, I came downstairs and I found powder sprinkled inside the downstairs toilet. Now, someone would have had to lift the lid and the seat, sprinkle in the powder, and then set down the seat and the lid. You know how these things are; you kind of try to ignore it. You think you’re crazy.

JIM: Right.

CHRISTI: So I brought it up with my ex. “Did you sprinkle powder in the toilet?” He said, “Um, I thought you did it.”

JIM: “Not sure why, but hey.”

CHRISTI: Right? I said, “No, nobody did it.” So we took a closer look, and it didn’t look like scouring powder. I picked up a little bit of it, smelled it. It turned out that it was Gold Bond powder, that medical type of powder. Everybody’s got it in their medicine cabinet. It has a real distinctive smell. So that was weird.

Another day, many years ago, my dog was going nuts. I was upstairs getting ready for work. I was home by myself, and I yelled down at her to stop. Occasionally she’d bark at things and was a pretty good watchdog, but it never lasted very long. She was super smart, and she would knock it off immediately when I said to stop. But this one day, it sounded like she was going to tear somebody’s head off, and it was just not stopping. She was really, really sweet, so it was completely out of character.

I yelled downstairs for her to stop, but she just kept going and going. I thought maybe there was an animal inside or an intruder, something like that, so I went downstairs really cautiously. And then I saw her, and she was standing on the couch. Like I said, Jim, she’s a super smart dog, and she knew she was not allowed on the couch. She was standing stock still, hackles up, barking her head off at an area about six feet off of the ground in front of the fireplace.

JIM: Oh man.

CHRISTI: Yeah, really weird. It got my attention for sure. I had to physically pick her up, shook her a little, “Hey, hey, hey,” and make her sit down to get her to stop barking at it. For a few days after that, she was acting kind of nervous and she wouldn’t linger very long in the living room.

But then within a day or two of that, I had a dream that I was leaving for work, and when I came down into the kitchen in this dream to go out the back door, there was a tall man, about six foot or maybe 6’3”. The tall man was dressed in dark dungarees, a white long-sleeved shirt, and a black vest. He had long, stringy, dark hair, and he shoved a note into my hand. Now, everybody asks, and no, I couldn’t read the note before I woke up, so I don’t know what it says, and I regret that.

So we had a ghost investigation team come out not too long after that, before I started doing my work as a medium and all the crazy stuff I do. The team detected some small things, but nothing major. No EVPs, no apparitions caught on film, nothing like that. But the psychic on the team said that the man, who was also the entity that my dog was barking at, was part of the Jesse James gang. And my dream was actually a time slip that he was trying to alert someone of a secret meeting.

The Jesse James gang was operating in St. Joseph and Liberty, Missouri, about an hour, 45 minutes from Kansas City. So not outside of the realm of possibility that there could be activity in the Kansas City area. There was a lot of stuff going on through here at the time.

This psychic also said there was the spirit of a woman in my house who wanted me to know that there had been another house on the property before the neighborhood was planted. It was farmland. There were farmhouses. One day I was gardening in the backyard and actually found the remnants of a stone wall below the ground, about maybe a foot below the ground. So I know there had to be something to that.

Plus, we’ve been hearing footsteps on the stairs and upstairs for years. Ever since that first loud crash, there’s always traffic going up the stairs and down the stairs and upstairs in the hall, and all the animals hear it. My ex worked nights, and I’d often hear what I thought was him coming home late – my dog did too – only to have him actually come home an hour or two later.

And then when my daughter was a toddler, she talked about hearing “walking feet” upstairs.

JIM: Oh boy.

CHRISTI: Yeah, it was crazy. She’d say, “Mama, I thought you was upstairs. I heard walking feet.” She was so cute. And now she’s a teenager and it’s just the two of us living here, and she says that she often hears me coming in, only to have me really coming in later.

JIM: Oh man, that’s got to be scary.

CHRISTI: You know, Jim, not really, though, because it’s not frightening at all.

JIM: It’s just like you have a ghostly roommate, or roommates.

CHRISTI: It is. Exactly. It doesn’t bother us, really. Now, one time I did have a client over and we were downstairs, talking. I was actually teaching a private lesson on how to connect with spirits. Then I had to stop talking for a minute and I said, “Hey, do you hear that upstairs? You hear the voices upstairs?” She said, “Yeah. There’s somebody upstairs on the phone, right?” I said, “Nope, we’re the only two here. Nobody’s upstairs.”

We couldn’t hear what they were saying, couldn’t make anything out, but I got some confirmation that there were voices. And like I said, it’s all completely benign. It’s not frightening. It’s like ghostly roommates, just like you said. Being a Reiki master and being a working medium, I’m always working on what I call the “energetic hygiene” of my home. So it feels really nice. People come over and say, “Oh my gosh, it feels so cozy and warm and safe here.”

The basement is a little bit creepy because it’s an old Missouri stone basement, but other than that, they’re friendly. They’re benign. I definitely told them, “If you’re in our highest and best good and if you mean us no harm, you can stay.” But nothing that’s not in our highest and best good is allowed to stay. So I don’t feel like it’s negative at all.

JIM: Well, I know you’re a podcaster, and as we said, a Reiki master and so forth. Where can people find your podcast and more info about you if they’d like to?

CHRISTI: Thank you, Jim. You’ve been on my podcast twice, and then once with Cassandra as well.

JIM: Yes.

CHRISTI: I was so happy to have you. This is the Radiate Wellness podcast. We radiate all kinds of different things, and you can find it wherever fine podcasts are found. I also have Real Life Angel Encounters, the podcast. That’s also wherever fine podcasts can be found. And Cassandra did the voiceovers for both podcasts. I was thrilled because her voice just sounds so awesome.

JIM: Well, thank you so much for that. Thank you for coming on the show and telling your stories. I always have enjoyed being on your podcast. Thanks again, Christi.

CHRISTI: Thanks, Jim.

JIM: I told you there were a lot of hauntings. Thank you so much for tuning in to this edition of Campfire, and if you listened this far, you’re probably a superfan, so we thank you for that.

We would like to tell you about our Plus Club. You can sign up to our Plus Club and get the archive all the way back to 2009. I should have mentioned this at the head end – we just celebrated our 13^th anniversary. We’re going to do a livestream to celebrate it, but I was feeling a little under the weather on Monday when we originally planned it. So stay tuned for that. We’ll do a Campfire celebration. But I wanted to thank you for your support over the last 13 years. It’s like so much moves so fast that you’re like, “Oh, I forgot to mention at the beginning of the show!” So happy anniversary to the Campfire.

To that point, if you want to get all the back catalog back to 2009, certainly check it out, jimharoldplus.com. We have a great deal now where you can get your first month for only a dollar if you use a promo code we have over there, and your first year is only $49.99 if you use a promo code, and that’s over at jimharoldplus.com. Just click on the banner with my smiling face.

Also, I’ll tell you about two free podcasts that we’ve added to the Jim Harold Media Group. First I wanted to tell you again about Unpleasant Dreams with my daughter, Cassandra Harold. We just released a new episode a week and a half ago about Teresita Basa. Fascinating story of a woman who meted out justice from beyond the grave. We’re going to be doing an episode next week on the Hill UFO case, Barney and Betty Hill. So please subscribe to Unpleasant Dreams or follow it on the podcast app of your choice.

Also, check out You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me. That show seems to be really taking off. We just put the second episode up this week and people are really starting to submit a lot of stories over at wontbelieve.com now. Again, those are non-paranormal but incredible stories that have happened to people, and I do that with my wife, Dar.

People are really seeming to enjoy both of those shows, and I’m so happy because – I love the Campfire, don’t get me wrong, I love the Paranormal Podcast, but I like to think that we can create new things that people are interested in, not just the same thing we’ve been doing all these years. So it’s great. I appreciate all of the positive feedback, and we’ve gotten a lot of it for both shows.

So make sure that in your podcast app, you add Unpleasant Dreams and You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me, both free and both productions of Jim Harold Media.

Well, we thank you so much for tuning in today. We appreciate it. Hope you have a great week, and as always, stay safe and stay spooky. We’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye, everybody.

You’ve been listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire. Tune in again next time for more stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things.