A young couple chased on a lonely night drive by a phantom trucker determined to run them down, plus more terrifying and some very touching stories this week on this all-new Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

Jim Harold [0:00]

A couple traveling down a dark, deserted two-lane road, fearing for their lives at the hands of a ghost 18-wheeler.  Up next on The Campfire. 

[0:11] Music. 

Announcer 1 [0:26]

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 Harold

Welcome to The Campfire. Thank you for joining us. And if you’re looking for true life, real spooky stories from real people who have experienced strange things, you are indeed in the correct place. And welcome to our electronic Campfire of the air. And before we get to the show, a quick note. Last week, we featured an interview with Jeff Belanger on the subject of Krampus, and Jeff is fantastic, and he’s been on our show, The Paranormal Podcast, probably about 15 times over the last 18 years. I have to count it up. It’s quite a few times, one of our most frequent guests, but we got more reaction to this interview with Jeff than any other and he’s been on the show many times and he’s always as great as he was last week. Which led me to believe that people are totally missing out on the Paranormal Podcast because we have discussions with great authors and great experts every single week on the Paranormal Podcast. And the most recent episodes just like Campfire You’re absolutely free wherever you’re listening to this show. So do me a favor. I know that people love the spooky stories. But if you enjoyed that discussion with Jeff and you want to hear more great discussions on the supernatural, the paranormal. Ghosts, hauntings, cryptids, UFOs, all of that stuff, check out the Paranormal Podcast today. I think you’re going to like it. I think you’re going to like what we find there. It’s just been something I’ve been doing. It was my very first podcast still doing it to this day and I bet you there’s a lot of you out there who have never listened to it. So today don’t delay, check out the Paranormal Podcast, I think you will enjoy it. We just did a show on witchcraft for example what it’s like to be a witch. Very, I’m not a witch, but I found it very very interesting. A couple days ago we posted a show on Heaven Sent and and being in contact with your past loved ones. And we have some more Christmas episodes coming up this month on the Paranormal Podcast as well.  So check it out, the Paranormal Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And speaking of podcasts, you’re here to hear the Campfire Podcast. So here it is. 

Jim Harold 

James is on the line from Vancouver, Canada. Always glad to hear from our friends up north, and James learned of the show from the great Coast to Coast AM. The mothership, and we’re grateful for them and all the promotion they’ve given the shows over the years. 

And James is going to take us back to a time when he had an imaginary friend, or was it imaginary? He’s going to tell us. James, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened. 

James

Oh, thanks, Jim, for having me on your show. By the way, I really enjoy your podcast, so it’s really a big honor for me to be a part of that. And yeah, let’s start at the beginning, I guess. So it was back in the summer when I was about five to six years old, my parents were just coming back from a dinner date. And when they arrived at home, they asked my two older sisters who were babysitting me and they were in the living room watching TV and when my mom came in, she goes, she asked, “Oh, where’s James? Is he in bed yet?” And one of my sisters says, “No, he’s in, he’s in the bathroom taking his bath before bed” and, um, and then one of my other sisters added, “Oh, and he, and he’s talking to his imaginary friend again.” And, um, so my mom thought that was pretty peculiar. And so she came into the bathroom and, uh, she asked me, she goes, “Who are you talking to?” And I just said, “Oh, his name is X.”  And, um, and I guess my mom was kind of a bit shocked about that.  And she left the bathroom right away. 

She went to get my dad and I think she told my dad something like, “Oh, you got to come in here and listen to this.” So both my parents came back into the bathroom and, um, and then my mom says to, you know, me again, “Tell, tell your dad who you’ve been talking to.” 

And I said, “Oh, his name is X.”

[4:48] And my mom was asking me questions about, “What do you guys talk about?”

And, and I said, “Oh, so he comes and visits me now and then.” And, I guess he was giving me life advice at that time. And, you know, he was telling me things like, “When you grow up, be kind to people, don’t be mean to people” and so on. And of course my dad is always being protective, right?  And he was asking me questions like, “Oh, has he touched you or anything like that?” And I said, “Of course not.” but then I guess I said something like, “Oh, but he knows magic.” My mom said, “What do you mean magic?” And, you know, being tiny, I guess, you know, sitting in a big bathtub, you know, I guess I couldn’t reach the soap at the other end of the tub. 

Jim Harold

Yeah.

James

And I told my mom, I said, “Oh, I said, he just pointed at the bar soap at the end, at the end of the tub with his finger, and he was able to levitate it and bring it towards me.”

Jim Harold

Oh, whoa! 

James [5:57] 

And that was exactly, that was my reaction to the bathtub too. And I guess my sister started yelling, or not yelling, but giggling out loud. And I guess I yelled out, “Cool, right?” And, uh, and then my, um, of course my dad, you know, always being like the type of detective type questions, I guess he goes, “If he had to describe X, you know, who, who do you think he looks like?”  And I said, “Oh, he looks like Uncle Ray.” Oh, and then my parents’ faces just went, you know, white or shocked, you know, looking when I said that. And it turned out that, uh, person that I was referring to, his name was Xavier.  And Xavier was my grandmother’s brother.  And Xavier was actually the father of our Uncle Ray. And so that’s how they looked alike. 

And I remember seeing old pictures of Xavier, comparing them to Uncle Ray and they look like identical twins. They’re both fishermen, right? And so they both were, they both wore this bandana then all the time, you know, because they were fishermen. And then I guess it was in the summer too, that they would always wear those. So that’s what I described him as. And, uh, so my parents, both my parents were just taken aback by that. they couldn’t believe it. And apparently, you know, Xavier just died a couple of years before that. 

Jim Harold [7:33] 

Wow. 

James

And so that’s how I guess I was, I guess, you know, when you’re young too, they always say kids are always perceptive, you know, to, you know, spirits or ghosts, I guess at that age, too, right? And so, yeah, so that was my experience with my imaginary friend who turned out to be my granduncle Xavier. 

Jim Harold

Well, that is awesome. Now, let me ask you, because that’s a great story. Let me ask you this. Was it one where this was a one-time thing or did he, had he ever appeared to you before or after that you recall? 

James

Oh, glad you asked that because I was just going to say, if we had more time, I could share another little small story that happened after that. 

Jim Harold

Oh, please do. 

James

And this actually happened later in the fall that same year. It was actually a milestone for our grandmother who was turning 70 years old that time. And we were all getting dressed up and getting ready for, you know, for her birthday party. Or actually it was her, we were going to surprise her with a surprise birthday party and, and so we’re all rushing around getting ready, you know, my two sisters are getting ready and, and then my mother, I think, or maybe it was my father, he said, “Okay, James, get in the car.” And so I said, “Okay.” And I started running towards the door, I guess. And then I realized I had to go use the bathroom. And so I guess I went to the bathroom to go to the bathroom, right. And then, and then when I came out, everyone was gone. And so, I’m at the living room window, I could see them drive off, right? And I’m banging on the windows, and, “Hey, don’t leave me, you’re leaving”, you know, they were leaving me, right? And I guess they forgot that, they thought that I was in the car, I guess, but then they didn’t realize that I rushed off to the bathroom. 

Jim Harold

It was like Home Alone before Home Alone. 

James

Yeah, before, exactly. And then, I must have been crying or something like that. And then Xavier appeared again, and he says, “Oh, what’s wrong?” And I said, ”They left me, they left me.” And, and he says, “Oh, don’t worry, they’ll be back.” And then he comes and he says to me, he goes, “Come over and sit over here.” And this was like, uh, I guess, you know, one of those benches that had the, what do you call it, the shoes underneath where we put our, on our, you know, we sit down for our shoes on by the door. And so Xavier said, “Come and sit down here and wait with me, they’ll be back.” And, uh, and then 10, 15 minutes later, my mom opens the door and she says, “How come you weren’t in the car?”  She starts yelling at me, right?  And then I just said, “Well, I went to the bathroom and you guys left without me.” And then, and of course, I guess my mom at that time was wondering, well, how come I didn’t look very panicky, right, or anything, right? And I was just sitting there with a smile on my face. And I said to my mom, I said, “Oh, don’t worry.” I said, “X was here waiting for me, or waiting with me, waiting while you guys were coming back”, so. 

Jim Harold [10:33] 

Oh, that is so cool. So that was but that was it for X. 

James

Yeah. Well, that’s all I remember now. 

Jim Harold

Right. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, we forget these things. Yeah. I mean, I’ve had cases where parents have told like strange stories from young kids who have experienced things and relayed them at the time, but now the kids don’t remember them at all. So you’re actually quite fortunate to to remember that.  So I got to believe you see this as nothing but positive. 

James

[11:01] Oh, yeah. I mean, I think I always say to people, well, you know, I shared that, I shared the story at our, our, at our office Halloween parties too. So and people are always amazed by it. Right. And, uh, and, you know, personally, I always reflect back now, I always think, you know, he actually taught me a lot too, right. You remember when I was telling you, you know, he told me to be kind to people, not to be mean to people, and I think I do that now, so, um, Like, I never talk down to people or never, you know, never criticize people or be mean to people. 

I always try to take both sides of, you know, things or whatever that are being discussed. So yeah. 

Jim Harold

Well, it sounds like we need a little more X in the world today. And I’m not talking about the Twitter replacement. I’m talking about Xavier. 

James

Oh, exactly. Yeah. 

Jim Harold

Yeah. Not the Twitter replacement. We’re talking about Xavier. And James, thanks you for sharing this story. I love it. I love it when people can tell stories that happened years and years ago, and it’s still just as powerful and vibrant to them. And three cheers for Xavier. 

James [12:08] 

Oh, definitely. Thank you. And thanks for having me. Stay Spooky.

Jim Harold 

Alex is on the line from California, and she has a great head-scratcher story. I love this story, and I have heard of stories like this before. I think it’s a fascinating phenomena. Now, Alex, you heard about us from a couple of other great podcasts. Tell us who those guys are. I don’t want to get it wrong. 

Alex

I heard you from Real Life Ghost Stories with Emma, and also from the Ghost Story Guys with Brennan and Paul. And I love both those podcasts, and they constantly talk about you and say how wonderful you are in person and online. and I thought I’d checked you out and here I am and I love you too now. 

Jim Harold

Aww, well thank you so much and check out those podcasts. 

We’ve got to help each other, all the podcasts out there. We appreciate their kind words to us and we want to give that back and pay it forward as they say. 

Well, Alex has this great head-scratcher story, so I’ll shut up now and let you tell the story because this is a good one. 

Alex [13:17] 

Um, okay, this , I’m taking a guess probably about 15 years ago, I may have been a little less but I went to Vegas with some friends, Las Vegas and my friend had driven… so just to clarify for the story, And we went and we got there and about nine o’clock at night. We went back to the room and I just wasn’t feeling very good. I was feeling very anxious and very, I just not feeling good and which is really odd for me because I do not have anxiety in any shape or form. So I called my boyfriend, which is now my husband who I’ll refer to as from now. And I was talking to him saying I just don’t feel good. And he said “Well, do you want me come get you?” I was like no because it was like a four-hour drive because we actually lived at the time in Long Beach, California which is right on the coast in California, it’s a four hour drive to Las Vegas about, depending on how fast you’re driving anyway. So we, he, he finally convinced me and I said, “Fine, come on, you know, come get me.” 

So he showed up, you know, four hours later or so, and we got in the car and we’re driving home and if you’ve ever been in the Nevada or California desert or any desert for that matter, in the middle of nowhere, there’s literally absolutely nothing out there. Certain spots, there’s no homes, there’s no lights, there’s nothing. It’s pitch black. Unless the moon’s up, then you can see shrubs and rolling hills and that’s about it. So we’re probably about a half an hour out. It’s 2:30 in the morning. I remember specifically looking at the clock in the car. 2:30 in the morning and we hadn’t seen any cars. So we’re driving along and my husband says, “Oh, look, there’s a car behind us”, you know, because it was just, we hadn’t seen anybody. We’re like, oh, okay. So I turned around and looked and it was at the top of the rise of one of the rolling hills. 

We were lower and you know, the headlights came up and you can see them and it pretty much very clear to see. So we’re driving along and we’re going I think 70 and this car or whatever it was keeps getting closer to us and closer to us. My husband’s like “My God, they must be driving very fast!”  So we’re like, okay, so keeps getting closer, gets close enough to us that my husband finally says, “You know I’m gonna change lanes. Just let him go past us.” That’s how fast they were driving. Well, as we change lanes, the lights change lanes with us. 

Jim Harold

Oh, boy. 

Alex

And you have to understand, again, it’s a, nobody out there. There was no reason for this car to change lanes with us at all. So my husband’s like, okay, so my husband speeds up. We’re in a Mustang, so we’ve got some speed, you know? So my husband speeds up, and we’re probably going to 85 now and again, Straight, straight. So we’re safe people, we’re not being crazy and it keeps getting closer to us. Lights keep getting brighter and closer to us. So he changes lanes again. It changes lanes again. 

Jim Harold

Oh man, this sounds like.. there was an old movie. Steven Spielberg’s first movie “Duel” with Dennis Weaver where this guy’s being chased by this semi and that’s what this reminds me of. 

Alex

It reminded me of the Hitcher with who is it? With Rutger Hauer. I’m like, oh, it’s a serial killer coming after us. So we’re driving and my husband goes, “You know, this is insane.” The car just get close to us, the truck or car. I assumed it was a truck because the headlights were right at semi level to the rearview mirror. All of a sudden, you have to understand there was some light out so you could see like the shrub brush and you could see the land, but you couldn’t see anything else, like anything in shadow, you couldn’t see. So we, it gets so close to us that the whole cabin of the car just fills with blinding light, you know, like it, like if a semi truck was behind you, it was reflecting in your rear view mirror. All of a sudden, total blackness. 

My husband, I, it just complete blackness. I turned around, I’m looking around, there’s nothing, nothing. And my husband looks at me and says,”Please tell me you just saw that.” 

I said, “Yes, yes, I did.” Needless to say, we got home in about three hours because we drove so fast after that. Yeah. And that’s that’s the whole story. 

Jim Harold

So here’s my question. Have over these intervening years, have you come up, you or your husband come up with any theories on what in the world you guys experienced? 

Alex

No, no none at all. I tend to, we call it the Large Marge incident. 

Jim Harold

That’s exactly who I was thinking of! Yes, yes, I almost said it. 

And then I’m like, oh, I’ll offend somebody because we have to be so careful these days. 

Alex

Yes. 

Jim Harold

So, although I’m pretty large myself, but. (laughing)

Alex [18:29] 

Yeah, no, we, it’s either two things. We either say it’s a ghost trucker or it was aliens or something. Who knows? You know, the universe is vast. 

JIm Harold

That’s right. It’s a far weirder place than we realize. And, you know, stories like yours just kind of put it in focus, weird stuff happens and some of it makes absolutely no sense. 

Alex

And my husband, very straightforward, very down to earth type of guy, he believes in stuff, but he’s like, okay, for him to see it too, we had a witness, yay. So. There you go. 

Jim Harold [19:06] 

I believe it. One hundred and ten percent, Alex. Thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire and Stay Spooky. 

Alex

You Stay Spooky, too, Jim. Thank you. Have a great day. 

Jim Harold [19:17]

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Announcer 2 [21:38]

Want the entire Campfire archive going back to 2009 plus much more? Get in on Jim’s Plus Club at jimharoldplus.com. Now, back to another great story. 

Jim Harold

David is on the line from Arizona and I must say, this is just a very kind of singular call because David was a hospice registered nurse for 17 years, and he’s seen a lot and experienced a lot, and he’s going to tell us about some of that. But first, David, welcome to the show, and thank you for your work in hospice. You and everyone else who does that, just very special work, and a salute to all of you who do that kind of work because I think it’s so, so important. Welcome to the program and tell us about some of your experiences. 

David [22:27] 

Well, thank you for having me. It was an absolute honor to serve in hospice. I became a hospice nurse, actually my two sons died very young in a car accident. 

Jim Harold

Aww, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

David

And it was just pivotal in changing my focus on nursing from less of a clinical nurse to more of a feeling and supportive and loving and uplifting nurse. And, uh, it’s just been marvelous to be able to be there for people, especially at such a trying time as end of life and for their families too. I did pediatric hospice for five years. You know, we would have 13, 14 year old mothers mourning their firstborn dying. So I, you know, we would just move the families in with the, with the patients. We just supported everybody. It was an absolute blessing to get to get to do that for so many years. I had some wonderful, wonderful experiences with some of my patients. I had one, this one really stood out. There was something special about this woman. I worked at a 10 bed hospice inpatient unit. It was in Mesa, Arizona, and we had private rooms. Our average life expectancy on our patients was 72 hours. So, we had a lot of our patients right towards the very end and this woman had come in just before my shift, before I started my shift. And there was just something special about her. She was non-responsive. She was what’s doing what we would call Cheyne-Stokes Respirations. It’s just as the body is really shutting down. It sounds like agonal breathing, but it’s actually very comfortable. We would put some oxygen on, give some morphine and do personal care and just make sure that they’re as comfortable as possible. And we were full. We had 10 patients. And I went in and took care of this lady and then would move on down to the next patient. We would just do rotations, just taking care of all of our people. Well, somebody down the hall needed something special. 

David

So I had to go down the hall and I’m walking down the hall and, you know, you look at everybody’s room as you’re going down the hall, just make sure everything’s okay. I looked in at this woman and she’s sitting up at the side of the bed and her legs hanging down, and her hair looked nice, and she looked nice. She had been in her 70s, 80s maybe, she just looked radiant, and she’s smiling. I’m like,”Hey, you’re doing good.” I head on down the hallway, and then I stop, and I think, Wait a minute, I just took care of her like, you know, 20, 30 minutes ago and she’s in a coma. So I’m taking steps backwards, you know, well, what’s going on here? And I get back to the room and I look in the room and she’s back in bed, side rails her up. She’s doing the agonal breathing, got the oxygen on and I walk up to her and just check on her, make sure everything’s okay. And the interesting thing was when I saw her sitting up at the side of the bed, she had two legs. And in reality, her physical body, she only had one leg. She had an old amputation a long time ago. It was long. I don’t know what happened to that. But when I just saw her seconds before, she had two legs and looked great. And I just felt kinship with this lady. I never spoke to her. And I just thought, you’re getting ready to go, aren’t you? And I just felt like it was a gift that she gave me to show me her spirit before she died. I actually got to see her like the butterfly getting out of the cocoon and stretching her wings and getting ready to go. And I’m in that room and I’m just feeling this love and this joy, and I’m telling her, well, go for it. You know, you’re ready to go. You know. You know what to do. You know where you’re going. And, um, yeah, you know, I took care of her, took care of everybody. It was towards the end of my shift when this happened and I gave report to the oncoming shift and went home. I was just still kind of riding high over what I had seen with this woman. And I get home and I open the door and I walk in my house and there she is in my hallway standing. She looked gorgeous, she looked like, you know, upper 20s, 30 years old. Her hair was beautiful, she was wearing like some kind of a robe or something. And she had two legs. And I’m just smiling and thinking, oh my God, thank you. Thank you for showing me this. And she was beaming, I’m beaming, and then she just fades away. 

David

I couldn’t wait, I got on the phone and I called work, I said, you need to go check on the lady in room two. I think she just died. They put the phone down and went in, oh my God, we were just in there and she was doing okay. She did just pass. I had told them then what happened. I had told them at shift change about seeing her at the side of the bed. I just got home and there she was. Of course, everybody’s all excited. Because this stuff went on all the time at her inpatient unit. And it was just a gift that she gave me. She just decided, for whatever reason, to share that with me. And that has stuck with me my entire life. 

Jim Harold [28:30] 

I know you have a couple of other stories, and I want to get to those, and we were going to put a relaxation on the time limit today because these are such compelling stories. But, working in hospice, did it change in any way your view of death? In other words, I think many of us, even though we may on one level believe in an afterlife, we also have that underlying thought that that’s it, or underlying concern in some cases. I mean, did it really affirm your belief that we go on? 

David

Absolutely. I have seen spirits throughout my whole life, as did my grandmother and my parents, and through my whole childhood and growing up, we were frequently seeing things. I found one of my classmates that had died on the side of the road in a motorcycle accident, and by seeing his spirit above the weeds, I actually found his body. 

Jim Harold

Oh my. 

David

That had repercussions for years, you know, because the police thought I was involved in it, but, you know, I was 12 years old. But, so I’ve always known that there’s much more than this. 

I’ve always known that spirit went on, but as a hospice nurse, I got to participate with the patients, at least at the physical level. And we’re touching people. It’s one of the few professions where you actually get to touch the person that you work with or work for. You know, as a hairdresser, you touch people. And as a nurse, you got hands on and it’s okay. And there’s a special connection with getting to touch your patients. And especially at this time of life, I became so in tune with my patients that even before I got to work and before I knew what my assignment was going to be with my hospice patients, I could feel what each one needed. 

There was this inner connection working with hospice and working with people so close to taking that next leap into the new, whatever, what, life, new existence, new experience, that you do more than just think about them, you do more than just the technical stuff of taking care of tubes and drains and and changing them. They communicate back, you can just feel that connection. It was a blessing, an absolute blessing to get to be a nurse. I nursed for 42 years, hospice for 17. 

Jim Harold

Now, one thing that I think probably made you very good at what you did and very empathetic was a tragedy in your own life. And again, before you tell this story, I’m so sorry, because I can’t even imagine. But since it’s such an important part of your journey and your story, you had sent it in, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to share it, but really, a lot of this goes back, as I understand it, to your sons, right? 

David [31:44] 

Right. It was, I had two boys. Their mother had just died three months prior. She had cancer. So it was just me and a seven and a nine-year-old, and they were in the front yard playing. I was in the house and I heard this horrible noise, heard people screaming. I went out in the front yard, it was just this red everywhere. It was just red and a car in my front yard. What’s it doing there? And the neighbors are running and screaming. I just kind of froze. And as a nurse, I should have known, you know, what it was, the red. It was the blood of my sons. Someone had chosen to drink and drive. And it just went back over the curb. The boys were playing in the front yard to the side of the house. And it ran over and killed both my boys. It was just, I just froze. I didn’t know what to do. I had the most wonderful neighbors. Thank goodness they came and did what they could, but the boys were trapped underneath the car and just turned to pain. Anyway, the in-laws did what they could and we got through the funeral and I just, I couldn’t work. I called my boss, I just got to take some time off work. They totally understood and ended up, it was a year. 

I stayed in the house for a year and yeah, I’d look out the window and I’d see cars drive by and people ride by on bikes and having their lives just continue. I’m thinking, what’s going on? The whole world stopped, at least for me, it stopped. And so I had some paint inside the house and I painted the windows because I just couldn’t look out. Couldn’t see the world. 

Jim Harold

Wow.

David

My world stopped, and I knew of that spirit and I believed in it, but that was too much. So I painted over the windows, it was total, I sat in total darkness for almost a solid year. And then one day, my friends would bring food to me, or I’d order pizza, or I didn’t even step outside the door and usually I would just crack the door open a bit and I’d get what I needed. I just, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave the house. So one day it was like nine o’clock in the morning and I was watching this TV show and of course in total darkness and up in the corner of the living room, it was like little sparklers like little diamonds kind of going off and they started getting bigger and bigger and bigger and they got to a couple feet wide and maybe about a foot tall, like a rectangle of like thousands of diamonds, bright sparks. And I thought, Oh my God, it’s an electrical fire. What am I going to do? I can’t leave. And out of this light, I’m thinking about it right now in my mind, out of this came the voices of two very young executive type businessmen, um, like upper twenties, and they just started yelling at me, you know, “We’ve got important work to do and you’re interfering and we are not going to put up with that anymore. 

You stopping us doing everything that we needed to do. We are doing such important work here and it’s all being ruined because of you, because you won’t let go, because you’re interfering and we’re not going to have it anymore.” 

They told me off like a mean cop. They let me have it. We’re not putting up with it anymore. You got to stop. You got to let go. You got to do it now. This is so important what we’re doing. And I’m like, “Yes, sirs.“ So I hadn’t been talked to like that. Probably any time in my life. And they kept going on and taking turns. They had different voices, but it was very well-educated, very businesslike. 

And the one nice thing that they said is one of them said, “We appreciate what you did for us, but that was then and this is now and you got to let go.  You’re holding on and you’re interfering and it’s stopping now.”

David [36:43]

I apologized. I knew who it was. I could feel who it was. It was the boys that died, you know, at seven and nine. And now they sounded like, you know, 20 years older and very well educated.  And I said, “I’m sorry, I had no idea I was holding you back. I love you so much, and you’re gone, you’re gone in a second.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s no excuse. It’s got to stop now.” And I was like, “I promise, I promise I will. I apologize. I had no idea that I was interfering in your new existence.”  And the voices stopped, and this rectangle, thousand light thing just got smaller and smaller and smaller, and it just disappeared. And I was back in total darkness again. 

JIm Harold [37:41] 

Wow. Wow. Powerful. 

David

Yeah. So, whatever goes on over there, evidently, it’s not just floating around playing harps. 

There is some meaningful work that goes on in education and growth and change, and the individual personalities continue. It was eye-opening for me, absolutely eye-opening. And yeah, I got shaved and showered and had to get someone to jump in my car for me because I hadn’t started it in a year. And I went back to the hospital and reapplied for a job. They were starting orientation the next day and I was back at work. That completely changed my paradigm. 

And prior to that, I was more of a technical nurse. I used to do high-risk labor and delivery. So I saw people coming into the world and then got into hospice and started helping people go out of the world. And it completely changed the way I interacted with my patients and the planet, everybody on the planet. It’s an absolutely marvelous experience. It’s a horrible experience. 

But we move on, nothing’s lost, it’s just slightly changed. Normally, I can’t get through this. I break down crying. 

David

Well, David, thank you, because I know anytime we talk with someone who’s had a huge loss in their lives, and I can’t think of them, you know, between your sons and then the mother passing, oh my goodness, what tragedy. But you’re a person, obviously a special person, who took it to power you and, as you said, your sons came and kind of kicked you in the butt a little bit to kind of spur that along. But my gosh, my gosh. Well, thank you for sharing these personal stories. I know you share more on your YouTube channel. Can you tell people where to go to find some of the stories you shared with us today and more? 

David

I was starting a cooking channel. I haven’t done any cooking yet, but it’s Uncle Dave’s Kitchen on YouTube. And I’m sharing a lot of my incredible experiences I’ve had throughout my life. 

I think maybe that’s more important than biscuits and gravy. 

David

Well, I do like biscuits and gravy, David, but all you do is take one look at me. But on the other hand, I think what you’re doing is very, very important. I hope everybody checks it out. It’s Uncle Dave’s Kitchen, right? 

David

That’s it. 

Jim Harold

David, thank you for sharing your stories on the Campfire today. 

David [40:26] 

Thank you for having me. 

Jim Harold [40:28]

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Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram at TheJimHarold and join our virtual Campfire Facebook group at virtualcampfiregroup.com. Now back to the Campfire. 

Jim Harold [43:02] 

Next up on the program is Charlotte from Derbyshire in the UK, and we’re so glad to have her on the line. She’s a Plus Club member. We appreciate that. And she’s going to tell us about something that just happened two or three weeks ago, and she actually signed up the day that it happened in mid-May of this year. So really anxious to hear this. She says it’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Charlotte, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened. 

Charlotte 

Thanks, Jim. Yeah, so I guess I just need to tell a bit of a backstory first about where I live and other things that have happened before this. So we moved into our family home about seven years ago now. We live in a sort of 1930s villa, I guess you’d describe it as. And we’d had some paranormal activity, sporadically over the years. We’d never really thought of as necessarily paranormal until this happened. And it was just the thing that happened recently was just so strange. We just started thinking maybe there is something living in our house. So yeah, initially it started off with… Loud rapping on the door that used to wake us up at night time and sometimes we’d think that that was, you know, things moving outside. But I think even at the time we knew that it was coming from within the house, not outside the house. We actually woke up screaming one night because it was that loud. So we started off with things like that but kind of, you one side didn’t think about it. 

[44:46] My sister started to say whenever she came back to stay for the weekend, things would start moving in front of her in the room she slept in. So for example, she was saying that she was sitting there one day and her glasses case just started rotating, just spinning on its own sort of thing. And I tried to sort of recreate, because we get a lot of lorries come past outside, I tried to recreate this like an experiment to see whether, you know, would something outside cause something on a table to spin and I couldn’t get it to do that. So, I thought, oh, maybe there is something to this. But again, I didn’t think about it. It was only recently, before I started, before I called into the show, we started getting things like my mum was starting to get, the smell of cigarette smoke very profoundly to the point where she’d be choking and trying to sort of like waft it away with her hands. She said she kept getting this and this sort of has increased in frequency recently. Yeah, so there was that. There’s also been kind of things like residual, the only time I’d ever really heard of anyone that had experienced this was a lady that rang in to you who said that she’d heard the sound of her son when he wasn’t in the room and I think he was crying or something like that and that was the first time I identified with it but I started to get things where I would hear my dog in the room when he wasn’t in the room, very much not in the room, things like that. And I was like, God, what is going on? It came quite quickly. All these things happen within a very short space of time, is what I’m trying to say. 

Charlotte

So, from us forward to the 16th of May, when I rang in or emailed in, it’s such a weird story and it’s so absurd that I can’t sort of make it up really. It’s just bizarre. My mum came back from going out for the day and she said, “I’m going to open up my new bottle of hand soap today.” 

I said, “Oh, I’ve already used it.” She said, “Well can’t have done because it’s sealed and on the shelf.” I said,” I’ve already used it. It’s lovely.” Uh, okay. All right. Um, go back upstairs. 

[47:24] Somehow for me using it, it’s got back up onto the shelf unsealed. 

Right. Okay. So she had not touched it. It somehow moved. That’s a bit weird. We move on. 

Anyway, she gets it back down again, starts using it, lovely, lovely, nice hand soap, so I don’t think anything of it because it’s hand soap. And then, we sort of said, oh, that’s a bit strange that it somehow moved or whatever. Anyway, we forget about it. I’m downstairs doing things, I hear this little mighty scream from upstairs. I run up and somehow the soap had levitated from the sink back to the shelf opposite, so it had gone on an upward trajectory onto the shelf. 

Jim Harold

Whoa!

Charlotte

Yeah, just a very, very strange thing and we just thought, how on earth, why on earth, It’s the most mundane thing in our house has done this. And it was just so strange. I just thought it’s actually quite funny because I don’t know, like, it wasn’t like we could have something cool happen. We had to have something really cool. 

Jim Harold

I don’t know. That’s kind of cool. But I mean, it is. I know what you’re saying. It’s like an everyday object. You would think it would be like some family heirloom or something that had great meaning, not hand soap. That’s it. 

Charlotte

That’s it. It was just the weirdest thing and I thought, oh my god, right, so I’ve got to tell you about this because yeah, I mean, I’d like to say I don’t really feel scared in my house, I never have done, but we did, we tried to sort of attribute meaning to it. We came up with a few things, like maybe it didn’t want us to use it, but then why would it have got it down in the first place? 

Just all very strange, so don’t know. 

Jim Harold

Very interesting indeed, very interesting indeed. You know, again, that’s the way I think that a lot of this stuff shows up, like, not with a lightning bolt on high, but, and saying, I’m here, but like little subtle things. I mean, do you have any idea of, do you have any idea of what, what this was? Is there a resident ghost? Do you have any thoughts? 

Charlotte [49:47] 

We suspect it because my mum was saying, “Oh I just always”, it was a weird conversation, she said “I always want to be able to get nice things like hands soap because you know things are things are tight at the moment”, the world’s in a bit of a bad situation so I was like oh you know I’m sure you’ll be able to do that mum. And we think that, um… My grandmother was very careful with her money and she was very careful with her things and things were always kept in such a way that you had your nice things that you didn’t really use, and you had your things that you used for every day. So things would be on the shelf that were really her prized possessions and they wouldn’t come off because it’s like it’s there for show. And we sort of thought, wouldn’t it be strange if it was my nan saying, “No, don’t use it. I don’t want you to use it. Keep it for nice, because it’s nice, you know.” So that was kind of, but then that doesn’t explain why it came off the shelf in the first place for me to use. Very weird, very weird. 

Jim Harold

And older people often said that, and I understand because I don’t know the situation in your family, but I know in many families it was tough to come by new stuff. So you kept it.  You kept it. And then, I mean, you know, I  know people who have kept things, and then they died, and they never got to use them. They were keeping them for some day. For example, my elderly father, we’ll get him something, and he says, well, I’m not going to use it. I’m just keeping it. I’m like, “What are you saving it for? Use it. Use it. That’s the whole idea.” But I think it’s a generational thing. But could very well be. Could very well be. Well, Charlotte, thank you so much for that head scratcher. If you have any more floating soap, please let us know. 

Charlotte

Will do, thanks. 

Jim Harold

Thanks for being a part of the Campfire and Stay Spooky. 

Jim Harold

Paul is from the UK, and we’re so glad to speak with him again. And he is an accomplished podcaster. We’ll talk about that at the end of the call. But first, he has a story about an apartment that he moved into in twenty twenty one and the strangeness that ensued. Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us and tell us what happened. 

Paul

Thank you and thank you for the invitation to join you today, Jim. 

Jim Harold

Glad to have you.

Paul

So we moved to our new residence in the spring of 2021 and my partner’s originally not from Sheffield so she’s not used to the area and we were having, as many people were, numerous lockdowns, Jim, so we would often just go for a wander around our new area just to sort of get our bearings and get used to it and see what little secrets we could find. And as part of this, my partner mentioned that there was no sort of uniformity to the housing. It was all very different. You’d have terraced houses and then you’d have a big detached house and then maybe a bungalow. So we, we were a bit perplexed actually. I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t give an explanation as to why everything looks so odd. So we spoke with the neighbors and they said, Oh, well, a lot of this area got flattened during the Second World War. And Sheffield was one of the main targets. 

Jim Harold

Steel making as we talked about before we hit record. Yes.

Paul 

Yes. So on December the 12th, 1940, the Luftwaffe came over and Sheffield from 7pm until 4am was bombed heavily that particular night. And as we were digging into all this and finding out about what had gone on, we discovered that the house next door to where we’d lived took a direct hit during the Second World War, and all seven residents that lived in that house were sadly killed. So the youngest was a 17 year old boy called Peter, and the oldest was an old lady called Mary Langstaff, and she was 73. But there were seven people in that particular house, and over the course of two nights nearly 700 people were killed and several thousand injured. 

The city center was essentially burnt to the ground. Jim, it was a terrible time for a lot of people as it was across Europe at that particular period. And so we did some digging and thought, well, this is very interesting and watched a couple of documentaries. And then we didn’t think anything else about it. And then about a week or two weeks later, we were walking through the hall that led to our kitchen. And I just walked through a cloud of cigarette smoke. And it was the strangest thing. You could walk in and out of it, and it didn’t move anywhere. And it was just in the middle of the hall. It wasn’t near a door or a window. It was just there. And as an ex-smoker of several years, it’s a smell that’s both very dear and very against how I am these days. So I was a little bit perplexed. 

Jim Harold

Yeah, it’s weird. with cigarette smoke. I’ve never really been a smoker, but my mom was an intense smoker. I grew up with it, never noticed it. But now, if I walk into a place with cigarette smoke, I’m like, oh, how offensive, you know? It’s like, oh, I’m taken aback. But you know, when growing up, I’m like, what? I don’t smell anything. But anyway, it’s funny how you change over time when you’re not exposed to it as much. You definitely know that smell, though, you know, having been around it. 

Paul

Yeah. So, at first we thought it was a bit odd and then we started noticing it would occasionally, it wasn’t all the time, it was every several weeks, maybe every two to three weeks, we would come across, once again, this pungent odor, but it was moving around the apartment, Jim. It wasn’t in the hall the next time we smelled it, the next time it was in the kitchen. Then it happened in the bathroom and then in the front room. And this kind of, like I say, this went on for three or four months. And we were really taken aback because there’s neither of us smoke. There’s no way for, like I say, it wasn’t sort of drifting in from outside. It was in a specified area each and every time. And then a couple of months after this had been going on, one morning at 4 AM, I was awoken because essentially there was this ball of odor above the bed, directly above my head. So I could basically sit up into it and it was there directly above, about, I don’t know, about a foot above the bed and it was just there. So I just woke my partner up and I said, “Can you smell that as well?” “Yeah, yeah, we can.” And it was just odd. You could literally walk in and out of it every single time. There was no rhyme or reason to it. And it only started after we discovered that our former neighbors had sadly lost their lives. So we were a little bit intrigued by all this, Jim. And, and so we, sometimes you can make a correlation between two things that aren’t actually connected. 

Jim Harold

Sure. 

Paul

But as you often say, it’s too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. I find it peculiar that we did some digging and discovered the history about the house next to us and some of the other locations very close to where we now live, having taken hits during the war to then all of a sudden be awoken by the smell of smoke on several occasions as well as it moving around the house. And I just found that really odd that it was just a very odd occurrence that started out of nowhere and eventually subsided after about 18 months to 2 years.

Jim Harold

Hmm, and I mean, it’s a pretty good chance that these people were smokers because I don’t know how it was there, I’m assuming it’s similar, but in the States most people smoked up until you know the 80s then it started to turn around, but I know when I was a kid in the 70s, a little kid, I want to stress that I was very little in the 70s, very small. But it was, it was, I mean it was more common And, you know, a non-smoker was the unusual person, it’s just the way society was. If you watch all the old TV shows, like, we had a chat show with a host by the name of Johnny Carson, who was hugely popular, he was known throughout the United States. And you watch the really old shows, and he has an ashtray right on his desk, you know, asking an actress about something and, you know, flicking off an ash off of a cigarette. Which now, you know, you’d be like, Oh my God. I mean, it was very, very common. I’m assuming it was the same in England. 

Paul

Yeah, very much so. At our chat shows, obviously we had Parkinson. 

Jim Harold

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just passed away, yeah. 

Paul

Yes, the British equivalent of Carson. And they too would have an ashtray on set next to their guests, usually sometimes with a stronger drink than most of them have these days, which is usually water, Jim. But I’m sure that was there just to lubricate the anecdotes. 

Jim Harold

Exactly, the conversation. But, I mean, as you said, most people in England then smoked during the Second World War. 

Paul

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, I’m similar vintage to yourself, Jim. So I know exactly what you mean. And it was exactly the same here. You know, I grew up surrounded by everybody that smoked. You know, it was the days where your grandparents would send you to the shop to buy them cigarettes. I went, 

Jim Harold

All the time! I would go buy huge cartons of cigarettes for my, my mom. I’m like 10 years old. I mean, can you imagine? And I never was tempted or never wanted to have any of them. I didn’t care for them. But yeah, so you’re pretty convinced that this probably was linked somehow. It makes sense to me. 

Paul

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because like I say, we’d been in the house six months before it started, so it wasn’t something that we just ignored or anything. Because like I said, it was pungent. It was so strong. On the occasion it happened above the bed, it woke me up. It was that strong a smell. 

Jim Harold

And honestly, I think that we in the States in particular forget how much of a sacrifice people in England made during the Second World War. They would send away children to the countryside, so they would be safe. Because, you know, obviously the Germans were bombing industrial centers like Sheffield, you know, to try to stop that industrial production. So, you know, again, just the bravery of the English people during the Second World War should not be forgotten. Something else that should not be forgotten and remembered and visited and listened to are your podcasts. Give us about a minute on your podcast and where people can find them. 

Paul

You’re very welcome and thank you for the opportunity, Jim. So my show is called “Mysteries and Monsters”, where I interview and speak with people from all around the world, covering a variety of topics from ufology to the paranormal to cryptozoology and some strange things in between. I’ve been running for over almost five years now. We’re up to over 260 episodes, so I’ve still got some way to catch you up, Jim, but I’m trying my best. And it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, that I’ve had an opportunity to speak with people that I’ve respected and read so much of their work over the years. And sometimes I have to still pinch myself. So you can find Mysteries and Monsters on all podcast platforms and also at mysteriesandmonsters.com. 

Jim Harold

Excellent. Well, check it out. I know you love that kind of stuff. If you’re listening to the Campfire, Paul, continued success with the podcast. And thank you for sharing your Campfire story today. 

Paul [1:01:37] 

My pleasure and Stay Spooky, Jim. 

Jim Harold [01:01:39]

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Announcer 2 [1:03:42] 

Subscribe or follow Jim Harold’s Campfire today, wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review too. It helps so much. Thanks. Now back to another great Campfire story. 

Jim Harold

Sofia is on the line from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. And we’re so glad to have her on the show. We appreciate it. Although I believe, Sofia, that the Philadelphia Eagles, the only time that Santa Claus has ever been booed and snowballs thrown at him. Is that correct? 

Sofia

Indeed, that’s what I that’s what I hear. And actually, I’m still in the military, which is so I’m not originally from Philadelphia. I don’t (inaudible) games because I’m not an Eagles fan. 

Jim Harold

Oh, don’t tell your friends in Philadelphia that. But thank you for your service. And I know that your story here kind of goes back a few years when you were in Germany and something very strange happened. And by the way, Sofia’s been listening since 2009. So she deserves some kind of oak leaf cluster, to use a military term, for her loyalty to the show and to the country, of course. Sofia, tell us what happened back then. 

Sofia [1:04:57] 

All right. So, I was a young soldier in a Vilseck, Germany, and I was 19 years old. I was going through a lot of personal challenges, very difficult time of my life, and actually we were working really late hours. We’d work, I think my first formation was at six in the morning and we wouldn’t get off work until 11:45 at night, Monday through Friday, Saturday, seven in the morning through seven at night. It was, it was a really tough schedule. Sunday we had off, but I would be so tired by the time I’d get home, many times I would just plop on the couch and go to sleep and then wake up a few hours later to go back to work. But I remember during this time, I would suffer from, I would feel paralyzed where I would wake up and I felt a paralysis and I knew something was standing near me. So I moved my eyes over to the hallway and there was an opening and I could see a shadow of a man. And of course, my heart would race because I didn’t know what was happening. I thought someone broke in and I didn’t know how to defend myself, I couldn’t move. And he was wearing a top hat, a black top hat. 

Jim Harold

Oooh.

Sofia

And I hadn’t… I hadn’t heard of uh the shadow man in the past, but having listened to your podcast for years. I hear it’s I wouldn’t say common, but it hasn’t just happened to me. 

Jim Harold

Yeah, the whole hat man thing mystifies me and we get repeated occurrences of that, 

Sofia

Indeed. That would happen, that wouldn’t just happen once. and it it only ever happened in that house. So, I don’t know if it’s related to the fact that maybe there was a presence in the house or related to the fact that I was a teenager, still 19. Also, from your show, I’ve heard that these things happen to teenagers. So, maybe the difficulty that I was going through in my life as well. But he would come regularly, and I would wake up, and I would have that paralysis, and I would see the man standing there. But what I always found interesting is that he never crossed the threshold to get to me. And what I would do is I would close my eyes and just pray. And eventually I’d go to sleep and wake up in the morning. But in reading, “The Demonologist, The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren”, in that book, I read that you’re Catholic, which I am, uh, your baptism is considered a minor exorcism, so, so you’re less prone to be attacked, by negative forces, so having read that later on, I, I kind of, you know, pieced these things together through your show and reading some books about paranormal activity. So, yeah, so that’s basically my, my first story there. 

Jim Harold

Now, let me ask you this. Is it a case where others have reported anything in these facilities, these barracks? 

Sofia

Well, this was actually housing. 

Jim Harold

Okay.

Sofia

This was housing. So no, I didn’t know, um, anyone else that was experiencing these these things um, oh, but interestingly, One time as I was being attacked over a period of time, however long I was there. I think I was there for a year, in one of my dreams I I was praying and I prayed for my guardian angel and she appeared to me. She appeared to me in my dream. And she was so tall, she was probably, I don’t know, two stories, about 18 feet tall. And I was looking up at her, and she didn’t communicate with me as we are communicating, but telepathically, and I was able to give her skirt a hug. I mean, she or he was so tall, but it brought me a lot of peace. So, anyways, that all happened in that time period back in ‘96, ‘97 in Belsak, Germany. 

Jim Harold

Well, very, very interesting. And thank you for sharing that. And thank you for your service to the country, which I know continues. And I know you have more stories we’ll have you back on in a few weeks to tell them. And I thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire tonight. 

Sofia 

Thank you, Jim. Thank you so much for your support. 

Jim Harold

Alberto is on the line from Florida. We’re so glad he’s here. And he’s going to tell us about one experience that happened to him when he was younger, and then if we have time, another experience in a haunted house.  Alberto, welcome to the program. Tell us what happened. 

Alberto

Oh, Jim, I’m very happy to be here talking to you, Jim. Yeah, so my story takes place back in Brazil. That’s where I’m from, that’s where I grew up. I was raised by my grandparents. And my great-grandmother lived with us. So it was me, my great-grandmother, and my grandparents in a three-bedroom apartment. 

[1:10:28] And the setup was, you know, my bedroom was right next to my great great grandmother’s bedroom and there was a long hallway and there was my grandparents bedroom. So nothing ever happened until I was around 15 years old. My great-grandmother got sick, you know, and she, we knew she was gonna die because her lungs were compromised, the doctor said, Yeah, there was nothing they could do for her. She was 82 years old. 

So, yeah, the very first instance that I remember, it was in a week before she passed. 

By the way, she passed in her bedroom, on her own bed. And a week before she passed, I was talking to her in her bedroom, sitting with her talking. And out of nowhere she started asking me who was that the person that was on the doorway of her bedroom.

Jim Harold

Uh-huh.

Alberto

I was like “Oh grandma, I don’t see anybody” and she kept insisting you know, “Who’s that person?”  She couldn’t see very well, she was blind in one eye and she could see very little with the other eye. Of course at the time I had no idea that that’s a common thing, people before they pass, they see spirits. 

Jim Harold

Yes.

Alberto

So I came to find out years later about that. I realized anyway, so she was coughing the weeks leading to her death. She was coughing really hard, like all night long, you know. 

Jim Harold

Right. 

Alberto

So I would constantly be woken up by her coughing. So anyway she died and she died around 11 o’clock at night. I don’t remember the day of the week, but she stayed there in her bedroom, her body till the next morning. I had to sleep knowing that she was dead right next to me. And the very first night that after she passed I remember I heard the coughing. The same coughing that she used to do before she passed. But at the time I was like, man that’s got to be my imagination you know. Am I going crazy or what? And I was really scared and so after that very first night I started closing… They took her away in the morning, the next morning, so I started closing her door and my door before I went to sleep. I remember that very first week you know I think was the third or fourth night. I got woken up, you know, with her coughing and that was really scary for me, because I was there by myself, my grandparents’ bedroom was kind of far away from me and I was scared to death even though it was my great-grandmother, I loved her. 

Jim Harold

Sure. 

Alberto

But that was really scary for me. 

Jim Harold

Yeah, that would be scary because you’re very young and then the idea that you’re, it’s emotional anyway and then you’re dealing with, you know, hearing the coughing and all that. 

Alberto

Yeah. 

Jim Harold

Now, do you, I mean, do you think that it was, it was actually kind of her spirit, like being there still and still hearing it? 

Alberto [1:14:10]

Yeah, yeah, I do. Because I remember I woke up, you know, I would rub my eyes, I was awake and I would concentrate on the coughing and yeah I could hear it. And there were other few incidents that I think about a couple months after she died. We got a dog you know like a poodle. And there were a few nights that I remember I used to close her door and my door right before I went to sleep, and a few nights I woke up with the dog barking, like in the middle of the night like two, three o’clock in the morning. I would wake up and look for the dog and the dog would be inside her bedroom with the door cracked open, in the dark, barking towards her bed. That was very creepy. That happened a few nights that I can remember. So I would find the dog in the dark, in her bedroom with the door cracked open, barking to her bed. So I would flip the light on. Of course I didn’t, wouldn’t see anything, and get the dog out of there.For me, it was the scariest night relating to my great grandmother. She used to walk with a cane, So in the middle of the night, she used to go to the bathroom, that was like two, three o’clock in the morning, sometimes twice a night. She would go really slow. She had to pass my bedroom door walking really slow with the cane, and one night I heard the same noise that she used to make when she was going to the bathroom and that was very creepy too. I even heard the toilet flushing and 

Jim Harold

Wow.

Alberto [1:16:21]

Yeah, Yeah, I heard the noise of the cane, hitting the floor you know. And because she walked really slow, because she broke her leg a few years before she passed. 

Jim Harold

Now they talk about a couple of different kinds of haunting like a sentient haunting where the ghost knows it’s haunting and kind of interacts and then they talk about a residual haunting, which is just kind of a replay and it almost sounds more like kind of a replay. Do you think this was that kind of, just kind of a replay? She made such an imprint that it was kind of replaying what was going on? 

Alberto

I think so, Jim. I think so, Jim. I think that’s, that’s, that’s a possibility. Yeah. You know, yeah. 

Jim Harold

Well, I know you have another story. I’d rather give that the time it deserves, the one in Salt Lake and do it on a separate call, but go ahead. 

Alberto

And I, before Salt Lake, can I say something about my grandfather? 

Jim Harold

Oh yes, please do. Please do. 

Alberto [1:17:30] 

After he passed at the same apartment. So yeah, anyway, a couple of years after my great grandmother passed, my grandfather passed. So he had a heart attack, you know, he went, we took him to the hospital and after a few days, he passed in the hospital. Anyway, he used to have this recliner, you know, like rocking, they used to rock. Yeah. And a few nights that I, you know, I went, went to get a, grab a glass of water, the kitchen. I would see the recliner rock. It was, yeah, that was really weird, you know. 

Jim Harold

Yeah. And again, it sounds like maybe your family had some really strong personalities, and they just made that strong, strong imprint on the place there. Very interesting, very interesting. Well, Alberto, I look forward to speaking with you about your experience in Salt Lake, and I thank you for being a part of the Campfire. 

Alberto [1:18:15] 

Thank you, Jim. Thank you very much.

Jim Harold

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Announcer 2

You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire. Now, back to another great story. 

Jim Harold

Sam is on the line from Scotland now. She’s originally from the States. When you hear her, she doesn’t sound Scottish, but she was telling me how much she loves it over there. It is a beautiful, beautiful place. The whole UK and the British Isles, just a beautiful part of the world. 

But today we’re going to talk about some spooky stories, and she has a few to tell us, mostly from her childhood home. Sam, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking time today and tell us what happened. 

Sam

Yeah, Jim, thanks for having me. So, I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, more specifically in Chandler. And when I was 10, basically from when I was 10, and we moved into this house. 

And because I know you’ll kind of ask, the house only 30 years old in, what was that, 1998. So, and the owners who had it were like, they had it the whole, their first 30 years after it was built. And like, as far as I know, like nothing weird had happened in the house or bad. But when we first moved in, even at 10, like I had these, I just had weird feelings. I mean, I was a kid who likes spooky stuff anyway. So, um. But yeah, so I’ll start this. One of the stories is about 15, and I was waiting for a ride to the movies and I was getting ready in the bathroom. And you know how if you put on makeup, you sit on the, on the sink and use the sort of medicine cabinet mirror. 

Jim Harold

Sure. I used to do a little bit of makeup when I used to do the TV stuff. Back when I was in college, we would have to make up. So I wasn’t very good at it. 

Sam

Well, you have to get really close to the mirror. So like the cabinet mirror is really nice, you know. So you sit on the sink and kind of do it like that. Anyway, I’m just sitting there to set the scene. And I remember so explicitly, like I’m doing my eyeliner and I hear my mom go, “Sam”. 

And I’m like,”Yeah, mom.” And then I look at myself in the mirror and I go out loud. I go, “I’m alone.” Like, that’s, I’m like, that’s weird. The whole house is dark. Like I’m the only one there. It’s a Friday night. I think my mom had gone out, you know. So I was like, okay, cool, cool. Get out my flip phone, text my friend, like, okay, I’m going to go wait outside. So they know that I’ll be sitting outside, turn off all the lights, get all my stuff, leave the house. I go sit on the curb in the very front of the house and I’m waiting and I just get this like the feeling, it’s just worse and worse. Like the sense of like, I feel sick and I feel the intense like runaway feeling. And I turned back toward the house and we had three windows facing the road. And there were the long blinds in each of them. So they’re all like the slatted blinds that go vertical. And they were all swinging simultaneously left to right. When I look back. 

Jim Harold

Oh, man. 

Sam

It was… So I got up and I was like, no, thank you. And I went out my phone and texted my friend again. And I was like, actually, I’m going to be at the end of the road. And I just walked until I stopped feeling like that dread feeling. Yeah, so that happened when I was like 15. And then before that, we lived in this big neighborhood, and I would go over to my friend’s house and we would stay until like, we’d go back and forth, even at like 12 to like 2 or 3 in the morning, kind of latchkey kids. And I had rollerbladed home, like I said, like 2 o’clock in the morning. 

I got on the old desktop, I sent some AIM messages like, oh, I made it home okay. 

Jim Harold

I remember that. 

Sam

You know, no one was on the phone line, so I could, you know, sneakily get online for a little bit. 

And then I turned everything out, kept the house dark, trying to go slowly and quietly so I don’t wake my mom up or cause a ruckus or whatever. And in the house, from the living room where you walk in the front door, straight ahead is this archway that led into the den and the dining room and the kitchen on the other side. And the doors to the backyard are like window pane doors. So they’re like two giant doors open, but you can see straight through and the streetlight comes in from the back. So that’s the only light that’s coming in through this archway. And I don’t have to go through it. I have to go left right before I get to it. So I pick up my stuff and I kind of stand right at the corner of the hallway and the archway. And there’s a man standing in front of me, a lot taller than me with his arms crossed. And I come up to about, I’m like five five, and I come up to about his arms where they’re crossed across his chest. 

Jim Harold

Ooh. 

Sam

But it’s like a silhouette. I don’t really see any detail. And I just stood there. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. I just felt frozen and then turned left, walked down the hall, went into my room locked the door. Put my stuff down and I stood on the bed because I had a futon that was just laying on the floor I stood on my bed and I looked down at my mood ring God, I aged myself in these stories don’t I? 

Jim Harold

Well, I think a mood ring was a little bit before, you know. That was like in the 70s, but they did come back, right? I know I know but it’s not like you’re from the original mood ring which would be okay if you were but go ahead.

Sam

Oh, no, Yeah. So anyway, it was black and I don’t know if you remember this if you ever had a mood ring but the only way to get it to turn black was to put it in the freezer. 

Jim Harold

Oh, I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s creepy Ohhhh.

Sam

It’s all temperature based feeling. Yeah, and that’s the last thing I remember So I woke up in the morning terrified like I woke up straight away.  I don’t remember going to bed. I don’t remember what happened after I looked down at my mood ring. My door was still locked and I had called friends and told them the story. Obviously, like, oh my goodness, you’re not going to believe this. 

This is crazy and scary and whatever. And anyway, so a few months later, my mom found a painting at an art sale and hung it up in the living room. And it took me a few months to notice that in this painting, it’s like this European villa painting that looks out on an ocean. 

So it’s got like stucco walls and stuff. And there’s an archway. And in the archway, there’s a silhouette of a man with his arms crossed. 

Jim Harold

Oh boy. Oh my gosh. Oh. 

Sam

And it’s just like the, like, and nobody, like, I showed my brother and I told him the story when we were older as adults, and he was like, “Oh yeah, I kind of see it.” Like, okay. But all my friends at the time, everyone saw it. Unfortunately, in 2016, my mom, that house burnt down from an accident and there was like quite, there’s a couple of other things that happened there. I have a really quick one. I’m not sure if we’re at 10 minutes. 

Jim Harold

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. 

Sam [1:27:52]

So, one of my best friends who lived in the neighborhood whose house I was at till, you know, three o’clock in the morning, she used to spend the night at my house all the time. And I used to talk in my sleep in that like liminal space, you know, where you’re like falling asleep and you think somebody said something to you. So you’re like, you reply. But she’d always like, you’re talking, you’re talking, go to sleep. So that happened one night, and I woke up in the morning, like six in the morning, and she was sitting up in bed. And I was like, “Hey, what’s up?” And she’s like, “I’m going home. My mom’s picking me up. I’ll talk to you later.” Okay. 

So she called me later. And she said that I did that thing where I was talking, but that night there were two shadow people standing next to the bed talking back to me. 

Jim Harold

Oh my gosh. 

Sam [1:28:37] 

Yeah, and she refused ever to spend the night at my house again. She would stay until, you know, we’d play video games until early morning or whatever. She never spent the night in that house again. I don’t blame her.

Jim Harold

I could kind of understand. Yeah, I don’t blame her in the least. 

Sam

I was like, why did you tell me? I have to sleep here. Like, I live here. 

Jim Harold

So, so I mean, and if you mentioned before and I’ve forgotten, I apologize, but I know the house wasn’t that old, you said it was about 30 years old, so if these stories were from the late 90s, it would put it into the late 60s, not ancient. What do you think was the genesis of all of this? 

Sam

I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I mean, I felt like it felt malicious, like it didn’t feel good, like none of these experiences felt like safe or welcoming or warm or anything, and my mom later told stories about how she would deny it until I was an adult and that when we first moved in the attic door, which was one in the ceiling that you push open, would be open and she’d close it and then the next day it would be open. But that was kind of like the only things that happened in the house other than feeling, kind of like, have bad feelings. But… Yeah, it was just like, oh, I have I actually don’t have any theories. Just super creepy. 

Jim Harold

Well, that’s what we specialize in here. I thank you so much, Sam, for sharing your story all the way from the UK, or stories, I should say. And if you ever come up with a solution or a proposed solution, let us know. 

Sam

Absolutely. Thanks, Jim. Stay Spooky. 

Jim Harold

Stay Spooky. 

Jim Harold

Hey, another note from me, Jim. Before we get back to our next great story, make sure to check out our holiday card contest. We’re giving away great gifts, gift cards to Amazon, my Etsy Mausoleum of Merch. Check it all out at JimHarold.com/Holiday2023. That’s my holiday card contest. JimHarold.com/Holiday2023. And good luck. 

Jim Harold

Matthew is on the line from San Francisco and we’re so glad to speak with him today. And like many people, he found out about our show from Christine and Em from “And That’s Why We Drink.” So make sure to check out their show if you have not, although I’m assuming most of you have. They have a great show over there, a hit podcast, indeed, with the big guys. So we appreciate Christine and Em. They’re always so gracious to us by sharing the show. And Matthew is going to tell us about a few encounters with a shadow figure. Matthew, welcome to the show, thanks for joining us, and tell us what happened. 

Matthew [1:31:12] 

Yeah, so I live in San Francisco now, but this actually took place when I was living in Portland, Oregon in 2017. At the time, I was working downtown and I lived in a neighborhood called St. John’s, and St. John’s is an area that’s about six or seven miles outside of downtown. It’s probably a 20 or 30 minute ride by car, but I was taking the bus and, When I would take the bus, normally, I would take a bus that stopped about a block from my house. But a lot of times when I was downtown, I would stay out kind of late and go to different shows. I was going to a lot of rock shows at the time in Portland. And I discovered, after having lived there for a while, that there was a bus stop that was about six blocks from where I was living. and the bus would leave downtown at 1 a.m. And it was really the last bus in Portland that I could take. So even though it was a little bit farther from where I lived, this was kind of the last option if I wanted to avoid a $30 cab ride back home. For anybody in Portland that knows St. John’s and sort of how remote the neighborhood is, they’ll kind of relate to this. So it It was the number four Fessenden bus, and getting off the stop at one in the morning, it was the first time I’d taken it, to get back to my apartment, the most direct route was to go by the side of the high school that’s in the neighborhood, and the sort of area by the high school that has the softball field and some stadium lighting. And I remember walking along that side of the sidewalk because it was fairly new and flat. And part of what comes into play in this story is that I use crutches. I was born with cerebral palsy, so I can walk. I walk with forearm crutches, and I can do about a half mile or so before I get tired. But I try to take the most direct route possible and don’t usually walk more than a few blocks. So this was kind of late at night, um, going by the high school and really. Really what happened is I’m just walking by the softball field. And I get to this point in the sidewalk where out of nowhere, I get this trailing of absolute and utter dread, just complete terror. It struck me out of nowhere.It wasn’t like the feeling you get when you feel like somebody’s watching you or maybe you sort of turn around because you think that somebody else is there. This was much more like the feeling of an impending accident where something really bad was about to happen. The only thing I can compare it to is like if you’ve ever been in a car accident, and luckily I’ve only been in minor ones, but it’s that moment where you see a car approaching from the other direction and it’s about to hit your vehicle, and you know you can’t turn and get out of the way in time and something’s going to happen. 

Jim Harold

Right. 

Matthew

That was the feeling that I had, and just out of nowhere, and so. I decided to turn around and see if anybody’s following me, or just try to get my bearings, and I turn around and I see this figure of a woman, and I really don’t know how I think it’s a woman, I guess it was just a slimmer figure, and she’s running across the street behind me, and it’s just this figure in shadow, like a silhouette of somebody, sprinting across the street from the high school side of the street to the other side. Like you might jog up to a car or something on the other side of the street. 

I remember specifically not being afraid of the figure. I didn’t really feel any specific terror because of seeing this figure. It was more about where I was located, and just the area seemed really scary for some reason. I see this figure, I turn around and just power walk out of there as fast as I can, And probably about 100 feet later, the feeling just stopped. And it was like everything was fine again. And I walked the rest of the way home. And that would have been one thing if that was the only time that it happened. Because really when I got home the next day, I was like, well, that was really scary, but I probably just saw a raccoon or something and it looks weird because of the lighting. And I freaked myself out for no reason. So, I go back home and about a week later I need to take the bus again at one in the morning, the last bus. And really, the second time is pretty much like the first, exactly the same time of night, I walked by the same street because it was the side that was well lit, had the same feeling and then saw the same figure. So, when that happened the second time, I was freaked out enough to see the exact same the same figure again running across the street that, I decided not to take that route again for a while and I really avoided you know taking the late night bus and I sort of tried to get myself home earlier for about a month.  About a month later I decide that… 

[1:36:45] Again, I must have been seeing things like I’d had a few drinks when I walked home from the previous time. So I was like, I must have just been, you know, seeing things that weren’t there. So about a month later, there was a night when I remember it being a night where I barely had anything to drink. And I think this is sort of the reason why I was more creative, because I was like, you know, those times I’d had a few drinks, this time I’m sober, like, I think I was at a store where it was really hard to get alcohol or something. And so I was just completely, you know, uh, clear headed and I’m like, nothing’s going to happen this time. 

So I take the same bus and once I actually get to the bus stop and get ready to go back to my house, then I started to get nervous. And I remember that I was really focusing on it this time because I was like, so in my head about what had happened the previous two times. 

So I walked down the same street again and sure enough the exact same feeling hits me at the exact same part of the sidewalk by the softball field and it’s just absolute dread and terror. 

So again I turned around and this time when I turned around the figure wasn’t running across the street. I saw the figure in the street, just stopped there, and it’s an empty street with good lighting. So just the silhouette of a woman just standing there, and I felt for the first time that it was actually conscious of me. 

[1:38:21] The previous two times, I hadn’t really been, I’d really gotten the sense that I was seeing something residual or that there was just a bad environment in that spot, and I was seeing an echo of something that might have happened in the past. This time I felt like somehow maybe because I was focusing on it so much, because I was so nervous about it when I was going down the street this time. This time I felt like it noticed me and then it was stopped there. I just saw its outline, clear outline of a woman in the street, black figure, just classic shadow. So remember it looked like she was wearing a hat, but I really couldn’t make out anything else. And I just, again, turned around and walked away as fast as I could and it dissipated. And really, I wish I had a better resolution to the story, but really what happened is I just decided never to go down that street again. 

Jim Harold

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. Yeah. So, do you have any sense or any thought as to what it was? 

Matthew [1:39:37] 

Well, it’s interesting because you hear about, I’ve listened to a lot of these podcasts and heard fears about what kind of being set of figures might be. What’s hard for me to reconcile with this is that, I don’t think the figure was responsible for the bad feeling that I had in the area. I feel like it was a, she might have actually been the victim of a bad event and maybe it was an echo of when that started to happen. I don’t know why it was a figure in black and not just a regular ghost if that’s the case, But it really did seem like I was witnessing an echo or some kind of, you know, witnessing the past until that last time when I felt like it somehow noticed that I was there, so. 

Jim Harold

Wow. Wow. Yeah. How has it informed or changed the way you feel about the supernatural? 

Matthew 

I’ve been a believer for a long time, and I’ve had a few other experiences with ghosts or things happening. I actually wanted to tell this story because it’s probably the scariest one that I’ve had. Most of my other experiences have been more positive. I think it’s interesting to me that you can have experiences like this that are in a public place that are just so random. It’s not always a haunted house or a haunted restaurant. It can be sometimes just apparently a haunted sidewalk or something, you know, it can just be some area on the street that has this energy to it. So that was something that really sort of surprised me. 

Jim Harold [1:41:16] 

Very interesting indeed. Matthew, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and being a part of the Campfire. 

Matthew

Oh, thanks for having me. 

Jim Harold

Well, thanks so much for tuning in to this edition of the Campfire and we appreciate it and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. And a quick note, if you’re looking for a last minute holiday gift, check out jimHarold.com/merch, jimHarold.com/merch. Now make sure when you order that the timelines work for everything to get to you on time, but probably better go there sooner than later. If you want to get things by the holidays, great stuff like hoodies and t-shirts and mugs and blankets and all kinds of good stuff. JimHarold.com/merch and your purchases support the shows. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. And of course, Stay Spooky. Happy Holidays. 

Announcer 1

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. 

[1:42:22] Music. 

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