Hear spine-chilling stories of a haunted Irish lodge with a tragic past, a creepy cabin, amazing psychic predictions of love that came true years later, a creepy cabin, and a woman’s supernatural search for answers about her uncle’s death decades ago.

Campfire reminds us that reality is far stranger than we often believe. From ghosts to messages from beyond, these true stories will make you ponder the mysterious nature of our world. So keep an open mind, embrace the unexplained, and join us for these haunting tales. Stay spooky!

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TRANSCRIPT

Announcer (00:00:15):
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 (00:00:26):
Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again and we’ve got a great show for you today. Whether you are brand new or you’ve been here for many years, this is the place to hear real stories, true stories from real people about strange things that happened to them. And the stories we have today certainly fit that bill. So thank you so much for tuning in. I would appreciate it very much if you would share the show with a friend today. That’s how we get these great Campfire stories. More people listen, more people tell their stories. It is a virtuous circle, and it only works if more people know about the show post. So please, so please spread the word. I would appreciate it. Also, if you are into spooky stuff, you like to wear spooky T-shirts, maybe have a spooky tote, burn a spooky candle, I could tell you where you could go to find that stuff.

(00:01:22):
Jim Harold dot com slash merch. That is Jim Harold dot com slash M-E-R-C-H. And just click on the Etsy option there, and you’ll find things like spooky-themed candles. We have a new candle that you can personalize with your name or the name of a loved one. Also, we have some great new spooky T-shirts and other apparel for moms for Mom’s Day, for Mother’s Day here in the United States. You can check that out at jimharold.com/merch and much more. So that is Jim Harold dot com slash merch. Plus we have some new scents in our candles as well, some new smells and scents. Please check that all out at JimHarold.com/merch and click on Etsy, and we appreciate it very much. And now let’s get to those great Campfire stories.

She’s back. Ellen from Ireland, a fantastic storyteller. I guess that would make sense. She’s a comedian, she’s a bass player, so communicating by words and music is kind of her stock and trade. Plus, she’s from Ireland where they tell great ghost stories and she has yet another one for us. You remember that last one, haunted by a Furby and a ghost child. That was something else. Ellen, you got your work cut out to meet the mark of those other stories. Welcome back to the show. Tell us what happened.

Ellen (IRE) (00:02:45):
Oh, thanks for having me back. Yeah, so this is a story of a place called Killakee Lodge, which is at the foot of a mountain in the Dublin Mountains where there’s a building called Hellfire Club. And Hellfire Club was sent to have been haunted by the devil. Oh yeah. So in the 19th century, the devil turned up and all this kind of stuff. I think I heard on your podcast someone telling this story before, but it’s well known to everyone in Dublin and surrounding areas, but not a lot of people know about Killakee Lodge, which sits at the foot of the mountain as you go up towards the lodge. And that place is haunted by a little person. So back in those days it was, Hellfire Club was treated as kind of like a gambling den, a whore house, all that kind of stuff.

(00:03:33):
A lot of debauchery happened there and Killakee Lodge was where a lot of people would be housed. So it’s kind of like a B and B in modern times, and where the servants quarters were and the stables, and they served the Hell Fire Club. But that place is very, very haunted. And I remember a friend of mine who’s from Dublin telling me about it. And when we went to visit Hellfire Club, it started to get dusky and started to get dark. So we made our way through the forest, and when we got to Killakee Lodge, me and a friend of mine, we were looking through the gate, so it’s kind of gated off, but you can see the house is on your left and it’s a big kind of manor kind of house. And then just at the back is all the stables and with the quarter doors, half doors and all that stuff, and they’re all old and kind of broken off.

(00:04:23):
And one was kind of just open. And I remember when we, well, I’ll tell you the backstory of it. Basically the people who were having the big parties up in Hellfire Club, they would entertain themselves with the various people that lived in Killakee Lodge. And one of the people living there was a little person, but they used to kind of bully him and abuse him and throw him around and stuff. And then one night they all got too drunk or whatever, and they picked him up and they flung him across the table up in Hellfire Club, and he bashed his head and died. And the story goes that he was buried on the grounds of the stables in Killakee Lodge, and he supposedly is haunted by that. I didn’t really know about this until after the fact, but me and my friend, we decided to have a look in at the lodge.

(00:05:15):
And as we were looking in at the stables, especially the one with no door, we had this amazing feeling of, we just had this feeling of as if someone was kind of shouting in my head, get away from here. And I’ve had this distinct feeling of anger directed at us and this feeling of a real big feeling of fear. The only time I’ve had that kind of fear was when I heard a lion roar in Dublin Zoo. It was just like this primal fear. And I just had this feeling was of I need to get away from here as quick as I can. And I was walking back and back into the road, but my friend moved closer and she took a few photographs of the stable. Anyway, I was like, oh, getting heebie-jeebies, come on, let’s go. I just had this profound feeling of getaway. So anyway, we ran off and we joined our friends and we all went off to Johnny Fox’s pub for dinner. And I was just coming into the restaurant from the restroom, and I heard my friend and my sister and a few other people scream when they looked at the photograph, because in the photograph there was two photographs. One, well, there was three photographs. One had nothing in the stable door. The next one you could see the shape of a head halfway down of the open door head kind of peeking out to its side.

(00:06:35):
And then the next photo she took, you could see the head coming out fully and the shape of a small shoulder as if something was coming out of the door. And then nothing because we ran off, but yeah.

Jim Harold (00:06:52):
Oh yeah. And that poor person who was mistreated and murdered basically. It sounds like that would be a reason for a haunting and maybe to hold this anger for all these years, and I guess it would be understandable in a way.

Ellen (IRE) (00:07:14):
Yeah.

Jim Harold (00:07:15):
Well, that is a great story. I appreciate it very much. Ellen, thank you so much. You are a great storyteller and I hope you’ll come back someday to tell us more stories on the Campfire.

Ellen (IRE) (00:07:25):
Absolutely. Thank you. Stay spooky.

Jim Harold (00:07:27):
Stay spooky. Next up on the Campfire, we have a return caller. You might remember a few weeks ago, Rebekah was on the show and she told us a chilling tale about entities and encountering them, and they had nefarious, nefarious motives. And if you haven’t heard that, you want to go back and listen to it. But today it’s going to be the flip side of the supernatural, the sweeter side of the supernatural. Rebekah is back from Long Island to tell us all about it. Rebekah, welcome back to the show. And I know this is a really good story and that’s good because you’ve got your work cut out to top that last one. But tell us what happened.

Rebekah (NY) (00:08:08):
Yeah, no, I know. Thank you for having me back. Hopefully this story matches up, but on the happier side, right? Happier scale. So I’m trying to think about where to start. This story has a lot of meat to it, I guess. But I’ll just start with my first visit to psychic. I was seeing this guy and I really thought I was going to marry him. It was like my college boyfriend and I go to this psychic. My mom had set it up for me and we’re going through the reading and she’s like, oh, honey. She’s like, you’re not going to marry this guy. She goes, in fact, you already know the person you’re going to marry. I’m like, oh, okay, well, jokes on me then. I have no idea who it is. So she starts rattling off some things and she’s like, oh, he’s a little bit younger than you.

(00:08:58):
He has a beard, he’ll have tattoos, military affiliation. She’s like, I’m not really sure. She’s like, I think Navy or Marines. And then she goes, and the big thing is he has a letter A and she makes a swirling beautiful script A in the air, and she goes like A big red a, he’s signing an important document and somebody with a G name is going to introduce you guys. So I was like, okay, I guess so. I’m like, I don’t really know anybody with a G name, but that’s fine. At least nobody who I know who had introduced me to a guy who I apparently already know, but sure. So a couple of years go by, I had broken up with that guy. I’d seen other people, nothing worked out, and I go to see another psychic and she’s like, oh, you already know the person you’re going to marry.

(00:09:51):
So right away I am like, did you talk to the other psychic? And she names all the same thing. She says, tattoo, beards, younger than you, military affiliation doesn’t name I don’t think in that one specifics. And then she goes, and there’s a big A with his name. She’s like, he’s signing an important document, basically verbatim the same thing. So at this point I’m like, there’s got to be a way that you guys are all networking and connecting and talking to one another because how could that be possible? The only thing she didn’t mention was the G name connection. So I was like, all right, whatever. So I’d say maybe another two years go by from that. And now I’m a very private person. I don’t really like to talk about those things with my family because I tend to not, I don’t like to look foolish.

(00:10:48):
And that’s something where it’s like, oh, I’m going to meet my husband, and I didn’t want to look ridiculous. So I’d never talked to anybody in my family about it. My sister happens to be a psychic medium and really started coming into her own a couple years ago now, I guess maybe, well, I guess four years ago. So it’s April of 2019 and she’s working on her abilities, and she stops me and she goes, oh, back. She’s like, oh Bek, I just got a giant surge of information for you. She’s like, it’s about your future husband. And I’m like, oh God, here we go again. I’m like, let’s see what she can come up with. Because again, I’ve never told her anything that I heard. So she goes, okay. She’s like, I see tattoos, younger than you, a beard. And I’m like, no. I’m like, it’s happening again.

(00:11:44):
She goes, military affiliation, I see the Marines. And she goes, and I see a big red A. And I’m like, oh. Oh my gosh. So I tell her, and she’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me. She’s like, you never told me this. And I was like, no, I know I never told you this. I never told anybody it. And she’s like, well, then it’s got to be true. Three people have confirmed this for you. So I was like, all right, we’ll see what happens. So a couple of weeks go by and my mom is like, oh, we have to go upstate for your cousin’s birthday party. You have to come with me. So I didn’t really want to go. I feel bad saying that I love my cousin, but I didn’t want to go hang out upstate. But I’m like, sure, why not? Let’s go.

(00:12:31):
My mom really wanted me to do it. Let’s do it. So we pull up to the house and all of a sudden this guy crosses in front of the car and I realized that it’s this kid, John is his name, John. And I was like, oh, wow. I haven’t seen him since I was maybe 10 years old. So his dad and my mother grew up as next door neighbors and our grandparents were best friends to the point where our grandparents literally share the same cemetery plot. And so they were best buds in life and in death. So it wasn’t unusual that he was there, but I just hadn’t seen him in forever. So what ended up just being a chance encounter turned into us talking all night. And very obviously, I can see he has a beard and very obviously I know he’s younger than me because I remember him from when we were little, and I hated him.

(00:13:31):
He was so annoying. So, he was so annoying. I still get on jim for that. So we’re talking and he’s like, oh yeah, I actually wasn’t supposed to be here this weekend. I was supposed to be on a show, actually. I say, oh, what show? And he goes, oh, Ink Masters. I was supposed to be one of the canvases. And he rolls up his leg, not his leg. Oh my God, that’d be horrifying. He rolls up his pants and I see that he has tattoos all over his leg. So I’m like, okay, people have tattoos. That’s not a big deal. That’s nothing, whatever. So then we keep talking and I see that on his wrist, he has this metal band. I’m like, oh, what’s that for? That’s really interesting. And he explains, oh, it’s for my friend. He passed away. He was a Marine. I always wanted to be a Marine, but it never ended up working out for me.

(00:14:22):
And I was like, oh, okay. That’s really weird. But in my mind, I was like, well, here’s the thing though. I’m like, his name is John. I’m like, there’s no A there. It’s not going to happen. So we’re talking and he goes, and then my friend said, oh, Quincy, you can’t do that. And I asked him, I was like, oh, who’s Quincy? I didn’t hear this person in the story. And he goes, oh, I’m Quincy. And I said, you’re not Quincy, you’re John. He’s like, no, my friends call me Quincy because my middle name is Adam, like John Quincy Adams. And then Jim, I kid you not, he goes, and he makes the same script A that the first psychic made in the air. And I was sitting there and I was like, oh, no. I was like, I have to marry this person now. I’m like, that’s how this works, right? I’m like, I have to marry him. This is not good. Because it was just so supposed to be talking to a friend and reconnecting. And now I’m like, oh my goodness, this is my person. Actually, my sister just walked in the psychic who one of the psychics who told the story.

(00:15:31):
So we ended up talking for the rest of the night, and a couple months later we were seriously dating and now we’re married and very happily. But yeah, it was just interesting how they all knew. And as far as the G name connection, we figured it out. Grandparents was the G name connection.

Jim Harold (00:15:50):
Ahhh. There you go. There you go. I was going to ask you that. I thought maybe I missed it in the story. What a neat story. What a neat story.

Rebekah (NY) (00:15:59):
Definitely interesting.

Jim Harold (00:16:00):
Now it fall into that category of what I say, too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence,

Rebekah (NY) (00:16:06):
Truly. I know. I couldn’t believe it when he did the A, because I was like, there’s no A name, there’s nothing there. And that was really like the clincher. And like I said, at first I was like, oh, no, I have to marry him. But I’m very glad that it worked out the way he did, because he is a wonderful person. He’s a wonderful husband, and I couldn’t have asked for better.

Jim Harold (00:16:28):
Excellent. Well, Rebekah, congratulations on that. And certainly those psychics tapped into it. What a cool story. Thank you for joining us today, and thank you for sharing this awesome story.

Rebekah (NY) (00:16:41):
Thank you for having me again. It was a pleasure.

Jim Harold (00:16:44):
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Announcer (00:20:14):
If you love the Campfire, be sure to check out the Paranormal Podcast where every week Jim interviews experts and authors about strange mysteries. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune into the Paranormal Podcast today. Now we return to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Jim Harold (00:20:30):
Risha is on the line from Vancouver Island, British Columbia up in Canada. We’re always so glad to hear from our Canadian friends. And Isha listens to the Campfire with her kids, Oshaya, Mateo and Lillian. Oshaya, Mateo and Lillian. So Oshaya, Mateo, and Lillian, stay spooky and thanks for listening. And Risha is going to tell us a spooky story when staying at a cabin. Ooh, Risha, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Risha (BC) (00:21:01):
Thanks, Jim. So yeah, I have a story about a cabin. It’s just in a small logging town on Vancouver Island called Youbou. And basically this cabin is on a dirt road. There’s no cell reception, no power or anything like that. And this is when my husband and I were in our new sort of building bonding relationship, and he wanted to introduce me to some of his family traditions, and this cabin was one of them. So we head up there for a week, and it’s the winter, and we get there, it’s beautiful. It’s a log cabin, but it gives off these vibes of real horror movie. You’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s barely any people around. All the cabins are isolated, and no one is in there in the wintertime. So I got there and I kind of have a funny feeling, but I push it aside.

(00:21:56):
I figure it’s just a new place. We get in, he goes right away downstairs to start the generator. I go into the kitchen, the main floor, and start unpacking and such. And I just get this feeling like something’s kind of watching us or there’s something there, but I’m trying to push it off. We have dinner, I start a fire, we sit down, we’re relaxing by the fire, and I start to hear these really loud bangs, and they’re right behind my chair, maybe four feet behind, and there’s nothing that I can notice in my area that might be making that sound. And it goes and it goes. Finally, I’m thinking, okay, I got to eliminate this by reason. And so I say, hey, what’s downstairs? Do you want to show me the cabin? And so we go downstairs and I look, and there is nothing in this corner, all the pipes, generator, everything to do with functioning of the house is all on the kitchen and bathroom side, which is the opposite side of where we are sitting.

(00:23:02):
And so we go back upstairs and I sit down and I’m thinking, okay, I got to try to ignore this. I didn’t want to freak this. It’s a newer, we are in our first six months or so. So I didn’t want to freak him out and be like, okay, you’re getting into this relationship with this total weirdo who believes in ghosts and spirits and stuff. So I’m trying to keep it chill. And finally I’m like, okay, I can’t, after the sixth, seven, eighth bump, I’m like, did you hear that? And he’s like, no. I’m like, okay. So it goes again. I asked him, did you hear that one? And he’s like, no. So I was like, okay, I’m going to leave it. We finish up and we go brush our teeth and we’re brushing our teeth at the same time together, and there is the loudest bump underneath of our feet.

(00:23:51):
It’s so hard that you could feel it. And I look at him and his face, his eyes were so big, I was like, you heard that, right? He’s like, I felt it. I heard it and I felt it. And so I was like, okay, see, I’m not going crazy. All right. So we go to bed and I cannot sleep all night. He falls asleep right away. I am lying there. I can just feel something. I just couldn’t sleep. So we wake up or I get a little bit of sleep. We wake up, we start the day, and at some point I head upstairs on my own, which is where all the bedrooms are, and the bedroom we were staying in, it overlooks the lake, and it’s really, it’s a beautiful view. So I walk up the stairs and I step into the bedroom, and on the corner of the bed, this man is sitting on the corner of the bed looking out at the lake.

(00:24:45):
And it was so startling that I stepped in and I said, oh, sorry, sorry. And I stepped back. And in that split second, I was like, did one of his family members come? And maybe we didn’t hear them come in or something. And I’m thinking, no, there’s just no way. So I creep back in and no one responded when I said, I’m sorry. There was no words. So I was like, okay, I look back in and there’s nobody there. And I’m like, oh, man. And I saw him clear as day. He was wearing a black and white kind of plaid, loggery kind of style shirt, scruffy jeans, big boots. He had a baseball cap on, kind of scruffy hair hanging out at the back. And I remember, so I go down and I’m like, oh, man, how am I going to say this? He loves, my husband loves this cabin.

(00:25:35):
It’s so special to him, and I can’t be like, your cabin is haunted, and I’m never coming back. So I go down and I just start questioning him. Do you have any family members that might’ve passed away? Or what is the history of this cabin? And he is like, no, we’ve only had it for 30 years. My uncle bought it from this woman. And I was like, well, I got to tell you that what I saw upstairs. And I told him, and he believed me, but he was kind of sitting on the fence. He could tell comes from a very rational family, and I’m multiracial. So we come from a very spiritual background in all of those. So I was like, try not to freak him out. And I say, well, what about that woman? I told him about the man. And he goes, well, actually her, she sold the cabin to my uncle because she lost her husband, her brother, and her son in an accident.

(00:26:38):
And I guess they’d gone into town, drove back home, and like I said, it’s a dirt road. It’s gravel. There’s only single lane traffic, no streetlights. And when they went to go take this turn around the corner to go through this single lane bridge, they missed the bridge. And they went over and yeah, unfortunately they didn’t survive, and she just couldn’t handle keeping that cabin with the memory. This is what he’s telling me. And so we’re like, oh my gosh, it must be him then. So he did believe me more so than he initially did, because I described him perfectly. And although he never met him, they were a logging family and it kind of fit the bill. And so we go home, I think shortly after that, and we come back in spring, and I’m just kind of worried now. I don’t want to go back, but I don’t want to be mean.

(00:27:34):
So we go back again and everything is relatively normal. I still hear the bangs. I still feel nervous at night. I don’t really sleep deeply there. I come home always really tired. But anyways, the second trip, I’m walking up the steps in the middle of the night and I had to go to the washroom and I was so scared. I actually wanted to call, wake him up and be like, could you walk down with me? But I am a grown woman, so I didn’t call him and wake him up. I just went to the washroom and I came back and I’m thinking, please, please don’t let me, don’t show up. And as I’m walking up the steps, I look to the wall and there’s the hugest, beautiful indigo blue butterfly sitting on the wall, and it’s glowing. It’s about six or seven inches across, maybe four inches big.

(00:28:24):
And I pause on the steps, I’m thinking, what is this? And it comes off the wall and it starts fluttering around me, and it goes in a really wide circle all the way around me, right in front of me again, there’s another circle around me a little closer. And then this third circle. And as it got closer in that third circle, I was like, I’m not letting this thing touch me. So I come out of my kind of trance of the beauty of the thing, and I rip up the stairs, I jump into the bed, and he’s like, what happened? What happened? And I was like, I don’t know. I need to be against the wall. And I’m freaked out. And I finally get it out and tell him what happened. And now we’re both not sleeping. We’re wide awake. Yeah. So we’re totally freaked out.

(00:29:10):
We go home the next day and the kids wanted to go up in the summertime. And I’m literally, at this point, I’m like, I really want nothing to do with this cabin. So I thought I got to do something. And I’ve never done anything like this before at this point, but I just was going based on shows and the way that people talked, I was like, I got to help this guy across to the other side, wherever you go. So it was a beautiful, sunny day. I go sit down by the lake and I just kind of quiet and go into a bit of a meditation, and I just invite him to make contact with me. And I let him know that we’re going to take care of this cabin. The cabin is in good hands. You can go off onto your next journey. And I invited any relatives that might be on the other side to come and meet him. So then I just kind of close up with that, and I felt lighter. I felt really good. And literally that night I slept like a baby in that cabin. I had never slept so well until I went through and kind of invited him to cross over. And ever since then, we didn’t get that feeling in the cabin anymore. And yeah, it’s much better. But nobody really knows this story. Sorry.

Jim Harold (00:30:28):
No, no, no, no. I think that’s important to say is that I think that sometimes people think, and again, I’m not an expert on this, is just my opinion from having talked to a lot of experts and a lot of regular folks who’ve experienced these things, is that if a place has some weird activity, that it’s finished forever. And I don’t necessarily believe that. I think places can be cleansed. I think prayers can be said. I think things that can be done to reclaim a space, you know what I mean?

Risha (BC) (00:31:00):
I absolutely agree. And it was just like this longing, this sadness. It was almost like he didn’t want to leave it because it was so beautiful. And I just wanted to, if it was possible, to help him alleviate that pain and then as well, help us enjoy the cabin a little bit more thoroughly. Yeah,

Jim Harold (00:31:21):
That’s neat. That’s a neat story. Well, thank you so much, Risha. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening also to Oshaya, Mateo and Lillian. Thank you guys for listening. Stay spooky, and we appreciate you being a part of the Campfire.

Risha (BC) (00:31:37):
Yeah, thanks a lot, Jim.

Jim Harold (00:31:38):
Up next on the Campfire is Michael from Arkansas. We’re so glad to have him been listening about a year. He’s going to take us back to when he was 17 years old, and some strangeness ensued. Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Tell us what happened.

Michael (AR) (00:31:54):
Sure. Thank you, Jim. I appreciate the opportunity. So this goes back to the early nineties. I was about 16 or 17 at the time, and just, ordinary house growing up, no real issues or anything out of the ordinary or unusual events took place there. I was asleep in my bed one night. This would’ve been sometime in the summertime, roughly. It was between, I wasn’t in school at the time, so it was during the summer of recess and woke up two, three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning, I guess somewhere in that range. And for whatever reason, my bed was shaking and didn’t know what was going on. And of course, I’m, I’m a pretty logical individual and somewhat rational, I think, anyways, as much as anyone can claim to be, I suppose. And so I immediately started going towards trying to identify a rational explanation for what happened, what was going on.

(00:32:58):
And my mind immediately started going towards, okay, well, maybe it’s an earthquake, my bed shaking, and so it’s got to be an earthquake, right? Only nothing else in the room was shaking. And that was the unusual part because you start going through these little things, little mental checklist, I guess. I’m like, okay, well, there’s obviously nobody in the room who’s trying to prank me a small house, so I could pretty well know where everyone’s at just by just laying in bed. You could hear if anyone’s up moving around or anything of that nature. And no one’s up moving around, go, nobody’s in the room, obviously. So I was able to kind of tick off a couple of those boxes. Nothing out of the ordinary there, no earthquake, nobody in the room, but my bed is just shaking. And the weird thing was that I kind of had this kind of dark feeling, I guess, at the same time, but I was kind of trying to check that and push that to the side because again, I’m a rational person and there has to be a scientifically rational explanation for this.

(00:34:05):
And there wasn’t one. So I’m like, okay, well, if it’s not something in the natural, then my mind immediately went towards the only other possible explanation, which was the supernatural. And I could feel, like I said, a very dark presence in the room. It was whatever it was, it was trying, it felt like there was an effort there to try to intimidate me, to scare me for whatever reason. And I’m like, okay, well, this is not right. So growing up, going to church, Christian, and so immediately started praying and I started praying, and immediately the bed shaking stopped. I’m like, okay, well, that’s weird. I didn’t expect it to work. I guess halfway, I’m like, again, I’m still wanting to hold on to the possibility that this is just something completely natural, that there’s a rational reason behind it. But.

Jim Harold (00:34:55):
Now the fact you prayed and it stopped kind of says, Ooh, there might be something spiritual going on here.

Michael (AR) (00:35:02):
Exactly. And that was, I think the alarming part to me more than anything was the fact that I had a certain level of confirmation that there was again, a spiritual component to it, and I stopped praying and the bed shaking came back, and I’m like, okay, well, I wasn’t expecting that because I’m kind of thinking, okay, well, I prayed and it went away, so which is stay gone. That’s how it works. It came back and the bed started shaking a second time, and I’m like, okay, well, this is really, really weird. And it is starting to actually, I mean, it was at this point that I’m like, okay, well now we’ve kind of crossed that transition between the natural and the supernatural, and I’ve got a certain level of confirmation here that this is a supernatural occurrence. So I start praying again, and the bed shaking stopped.

(00:35:55):
I’m like, okay, well, if there was any doubt at this point that this was something that was in the supernatural, I think I pretty well have dismissed that possibility again, that rational brain trying to figure this out. So I prayed, and then again it stopped. And so, okay, well maybe it’s gone now. Well, it actually came and started again, and even a little bit more so this time, and I started praying only this time it didn’t stop. And that really got me, I’m like, okay, well, I have to admit, I mean, at this point I’m kind of like, I don’t scare very easy. I really don’t. But this point, this is really starting to bother me. Number one, the fact that it woke me up doing this the second, not just once, twice, and now a third time basically that this has happened and now I’m praying and nothing is basically, it’s still continuing.

(00:36:53):
And the weirdest thing is that as I’m laying there kind of going through all these things in my head, I felt a peace that came over me, unlike anything that I could describe in the natural, truthfully, it was a peace that passes understanding. You don’t have a rational explanation for it. You can just feel like these arms that just kind of lovingly wrap themselves around you. And I just said, you can shake my bed all you want to. I’m going to roll over and go back to sleep. And I did, and it never bothered me again. So whatever occurred that night was a one and only type of event in my life.

Jim Harold (00:37:36):
Yeah. Was there anything you think precipitated it

Michael (AR) (00:37:42):
At that point in time? No, I really don’t. I mean, I went through a period later in my teenage years where I kind of questioned my faith and those types of things. And again, being a rational kind of sciencey minded individual, I think that that’s perfectly understandable. But at that point in time, no, I really can’t think of anything specific that had gone on. Again, I hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary prior to it. I wasn’t playing with Ouija boards or trying to do anything of that nature, any of the things that people would typically think of as a catalyst for bringing about that type of activity. But for whatever reason, it happened that one time and that one time only. I’m kind of thankful in some ways because over the years, I’ve often said, I’ve told this to my kids too. I said, I think sometimes you’re offered in life one or two really unexplainable events, things that just really prove to you that, and I’ve heard you say this too, that reality is something’s far stranger than what we really understand. I agree. And being a rational person, I think that’s important that we have that reminder that we don’t necessarily have all the answers, and that things can’t always come back to simple science and reason and logic.

Jim Harold (00:39:04):
I agree. I agree. There is a place for reason, there is a place for logic, but some things are beyond logic, and it sounds like that’s

Michael (AR) (00:39:11):
They are. That’s what you experienced. I’ve only had one other incident in my entire life that really made me go, can I tell that? Is it time?

Jim Harold (00:39:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Michael (AR) (00:39:21):
Okay. Well, this happened, we moved to Arkansas a few years ago, and I’ve heard people talk about seeing orbs and things of that nature, and I always dismiss them because it was like, Hey, well, you’re just seeing dust and stuff like that on camera lenses, and I did security work before, so I know all about how an insect crawling across the camera lens makes it look like a strange thing, stuff of that nature. Well, this was completely different. I was actually, we were clearing land by day and burning brush by night because we’d moved on to a property that just didn’t have anything on it at the time, except just us and our camper. And like I said, we were clearing brush by day and burning brush by night. And this evening was actually, it’s about three years ago, roughly this time, this time of the year almost as a matter of fact.

(00:40:15):
So this is March, and we were burning some brush. I was kind of tending the fire, making sure that nothing got out of hand, and I was just sitting there in the chair just kind of relaxing. And off to my left, I saw a ball of light. I’m like, that’s just weird. At first, I’m thinking, plane. Okay, well, no planes don’t weave between trees like that. I’m thinking, I’m going through, again, reaching for the rational explanations, trying to understand it, and I’m like, okay, well, is it a drone? I’m like, well, drones aren’t soccer ball shaped. This is completely spherical, just literally a glowing ball of light. And it was bobbing and weaving among the trees and like going up and down. And so it actually had, I could tell where it was at because I knew where the tree line was by daytime and everything.

(00:41:10):
And so I kind of gotten pretty familiar with it by being out there at night too, watching the fire on a regular basis. I knew what to expect. And this is just one of those things that it was just weird and it just kind of bobbed and weaved in among the trees, and I didn’t even turn my head. I just kind of tracked it with my eyes. Of course, I’m going through the other little things too. Okay, well, is it a floater? Is it a neurological condition? Is it check? Trying to go through and figure the other things. I’m like, well, listen, none of those things make sense. And I didn’t even tell my family about it at the time. I didn’t mention it to any of them. I’m like, this is one of those one-time things. I have no explanation for it. I’m not even going to tell anybody about it. Well, about two weeks later, we’re all sitting around the fire again, and this time I didn’t see it, but my wife and daughter who were sitting next to me at the time, they saw one off to my right. And of course, by the time that I’m like, I didn’t even turn to look at it. I’m just looking at their expression, what’s going on. It’s like they’re part of an inside joke or something that I’m not privy to, and they’re like,

(00:42:20):
I’m like, did you see it? And they’re like, I’m like, was it a ball of light? Yeah, it was a ball of light and it looked like blah, blah, blah. And they’re like going off about what it was, and it was the funniest thing because I’m like, okay, well now I know I’m not crazy. At least I don’t need to go get a CAT scan or an MRI or anything else. So that’s a bit of a relief, I think, but I have no explanation for it. We’ve seen the same phenomenon multiple times, and there very well could be a logical reasoning for it, but I’m actually led a loss for words as to what it could be. We’ve ruled out the other things like ball lightning and things of that nature, because every time it happens, it’s like clear it apart at cloudy skies and there’s no lightning anywhere around and don’t know what it is, have no clue. But we’ve certainly seen more than on one occasion at least, flying orbs, and these are not, like I said, the ones on camera.

Jim Harold (00:43:14):
Interesting. It’s one of those things. It is a head scratcher. And Michael, if you ever capture that on video, let us know.

Michael (AR) (00:43:22):
I would love to. Yeah.

Jim Harold (00:43:24):
I got to tell you again, the world is a far stranger place than we give it credit for, I think. And your stories kind of back that up. Michael, thank you so much for joining us on the Campfire and stay spooky.

Michael (AR) (00:43:38):
Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.

Jim Harold (00:43:40):
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Announcer (00:46:46):
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 (00:46:56):
You might remember a few weeks back, Tammi was on and talking about when she was working at a historic exhibit for the wreck of the Titanic and a ghost that showed up, and she has another interesting story for us from her research efforts, this one on a family project regarding World War II and some head scratchers that ensued. Tammi, welcome to the show. Welcome back, and tell us what happened.

Tammi (KY) (00:47:20):
Thank you. Thank you for letting me come back. Well, okay. This essentially started when I first learned about my uncle when I was eight years old, but it wasn’t until 1998 when I was internet savvy and knew how to do research that I finally started researching the fate of a ship called the USS Strong DD 467. My grandfather’s youngest brother, my great uncle Billy, died when the ship was torpedoed by the Japanese on July, I’m sorry, July 5th, 1943. And I don’t know, I can’t tell you. I have suspicions about why I’m interested, but I won’t go into that right now. But since 98, from 98, I started researching him, found that there were many survivors, many of the survivors were officers, fellow officers of Billy. He was an ensign in communications, and I contacted some of these men, and one of them told me that he had photographs that he had taken onboard the ship, that fortunately he sent home to his family before the ship went down.

(00:48:27):
Otherwise, none of this would’ve, a lot of this wouldn’t have happened. So he sent these photographs home. So he told me he had them. He offered to share ’em with me, so I said, yes, absolutely, I’d love to see them. So he sent me copies of these three photographs. My uncle was in two of them, and when I saw the photographs, to me, it looked like a fraternity hazing. These men were not in uniform, they were covered in gun grease. One fat gentleman had a diaper on, and I just looked at these and I looked at my husband and I said, what is this? Yeah. I said, what is this? I said, I wish I had something from Billy that told me what was going on on this day. Okay, so a few months later, one of Billy’s sisters, my aunt Lillian, died in East St.

(00:49:13):
Louis, Illinois, and her kids sent some of her possessions to the last remaining sibling. My Aunt Stella. My Aunt Stella knew about the research I’ve been doing on my uncle, and she packed up a couple of things and sent them to me. So I get Stella’s package, I open it up, there’s an envelope that says, I thought you’d like to have this through your research. So I open the envelope and I just about fell over. I got chills from head to foot, and I opened it up. It was a letter on ships stationary. The photographs were taken January 10th, 1943. The letter was stated January 17th, addressed to his sisters Lillian and Naomi, who he called Toots and Niro, and it explained everything that was going on on that day in the King Neptune crossing the equator ceremony.

Jim Harold (00:50:10):
I’ve heard of this, I’ve heard of this.

Tammi (KY) (00:50:10):
I was floored, and the first words out of my mouth, first thought in my head was my God, he heard me.

Jim Harold (00:50:20):
Wow.

Tammi (KY) (00:50:22):
Yeah. I’ve had several very interesting head crafters that have arisen from this product, and got lucky that I had a group of shipwreck hunters that located the wreck of the ship in February of 2019, so it’s been a very interesting ride.

Jim Harold (00:50:39):
Yeah. Yeah. That is amazing. When something just happens to turn up after you said, boy, I wish I knew where we were going. I’ve heard of this king Neptune thing, like weird celebrations and stuff like that. I’ve heard of that, yes. Yeah,

Tammi (KY) (00:50:55):
And of course I researched that once I got the letter, but it was like, oh my goodness. Everything that happened, everything that happened to him, if you have been there before, you’re a shellback. If you are first time crossing your pollywog. And so they go through this, it is like a fraternity hazing ceremony, and all of the pollywogs are just put through the mill. They’re beaten with paddles, and they’re covered in gun grease. They have their head shaved and they have to kiss the belly of the big baby, and that is why they had the fat guy in the diaper. They had his belly covered in gun grease.

Jim Harold (00:51:31):
Well, I’ll know not to do that.

Tammi (KY) (00:51:36):
Exactly.

Jim Harold (00:51:37):
Thank you so much for being a part of the show and sharing this little bit of history, and I always find it interesting. There’s a great show on PBS and I can’t remember where it is, what it’s called. I forget. It’s a gentleman that does genealogy and sometimes –

Tammi (KY) (00:51:51):
Finding your roots?

Jim Harold (00:51:52):
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And it almost sometimes feels like the generations are showing themselves or communicating back in a way like, Hey, take a look at this and take a look at that. I think that happens. Thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire today.

Tammi (KY) (00:52:11):
Thank you. And I’ll come back later and tell a few more head scratchers.

Jim Harold (00:52:14):
Amanda has been listening well for around a year. She’s in today from North Carolina, and she’s going to tell us about, and this is a very provocative title, the Night the Devil called. Amanda. You have piqued my curiosity with that title. Tell us what happened.

Amanda (NC) (00:52:34):
Okay. This takes place about 2012, I think, whenever the documentary for the Amityville. It’s called My Amityville Horror. I think it was Daniel Lutz that grew up in the home with his family, and I’ve always kind of been into the Amityville movie and the story about what happened there. So when that came out, me and my family that night, we watched it shortly after it came out, and it was pretty late in the evening. We had watched it and me and my husband, we have a couple kids, and they were all pretty young still at that time, and we got done watching it, and this was later in the evening, like I said, and not too long after we had finished it. This was probably after 10:30 at night. We got a phone call and it said it was from Amityville, New York.

Jim Harold (00:53:36):
So you had just watched this documentary about the Amityville and Amityville Horror, the Lutz case. You had watched this documentary. You were talking about the film and all this different stuff, and then you get a call from Amityville, New York.

Amanda (NC) (00:53:52):
Wow. Yes. This was, I think, I believe it was Saturday night, and after 10:30, nobody like a telemarketers or anything should have been calling. It was of course family, and my husband was too freaked out to answer the phone, as you can imagine. So we let it go. Did not answer it, but he did dial it back. It did have a number. We dialed it back, but the thing is, when we called it back, it said this number was not in service,

Jim Harold (00:54:27):
So you called back the same number that showed up on your caller id, and it says, this number is no longer in service. Wow.

Amanda (NC) (00:54:35):
Yeah. Never been able to explain it. It’s just too much of a coincidence to not be, I feel like.

Jim Harold (00:54:43):
Right. Yeah. I mean, what are the chances? Amityville, as I remember, is not a big town and at 10:30 at night, that’s pretty wild. Let me ask you this, do you have any theories?

Amanda (NC) (00:54:56):
Not really. Just you couldn’t have manifested that, I don’t know, which is really strange and nobody has ever been able to explain it. A lot of people don’t believe us when we tell that story, but yeah, it really freaked us out that night.

Jim Harold (00:55:14):
Now, when I think about, there are two different explanations I come up with you tell me which one appeals to you more. You kind of touched on the idea of manifesting it, that kind of your collective psychic energy was pointing towards Amityville, New York. You were thinking about it, so not that you imagined it, you didn’t imagine it, but you guys almost made it happen. I guess that’s one theory, and then the other theory was that maybe it was some kind of trickster entity or some kind of evil entity that was trying to mess with you. Those are two different theories I could think of. Which one do you tend to gravitate towards?

Amanda (NC) (00:55:56):
I want to say the first one, but I’m feeling like it could be the second one. Interesting. My husband has a history of being sensitive, and it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had something happen within our life that was kind of unexplainable.

Jim Harold (00:56:16):
I’ll tell you. That is spooky. And I do believe that one of my favorite phrases I use on the show is too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, and this certainly sounds like one of those. Thank you so much, Amanda, for sharing your story. If you ever come up with an explanation or have another story, please do call back in. All right. Thank you so much. Kim is on the line from Kentucky. She’s going to take us back to her college years and something very interesting that happened. Kim, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us and tell us what happened.

Kim (KY) (00:56:49):
Thank you for having me. This was probably, it was the late eighties and it was a small college and we all lived in a dorm and well, girls live with girls, but it was a co-ed hallway, and I had a friend and we were hanging out in his dorm room, and for some reason we were sitting there talking about auras, and all of a sudden, I mean, nobody else was in the room. We were just alone in there, and it was kind of dark. I don’t think we had the lights on that bright all of a sudden. Just got a weird look on his face and looked at me funny, and then all of a sudden I had a sensation. I felt like it was a whoosh from outside the room, and something went into me. It felt like there was a sensation in my whole body.

(00:57:44):
My whole body could feel all this happening, and it was very strange. It was kind of like I didn’t have normal vision or a normal sense of time and space, everything. It was kind of like back in the old days where there was static, the gray and black on tv, it kind of felt like that this is like a buzz, and then just, I don’t know. I had the sensation. I may have lifted up out of my body and well then all of a sudden I just thought, oh, get out, get out. And then I’m looking at my friend, I think to myself, I think that I’m nuts and I’m not going to say anything about this. I don’t know what just happened and I don’t say anything. And then he looks at me and was like, oh my God, what was that? And then I’m like, oh, I mean, that just blew my mind that this was something that really happened objectively to two people. It was not just in my imagination.

(00:58:49):
And then afterwards, I don’t really remember the conversation we had, but afterwards, if all the heat drained out of my body, my hands were ice cold and I could still feel buzzing for a good hour after that buzzing in my hands, extremities, and even my hands were shaking. And I mean, that was a very weird experience that I think I did not know what to think of it for many years, but it kind of scared me. But actually when he looked at me and said, oh my God, what was that? I have to get back to that. He said that from his point of view that he said he saw my aura and then all of a sudden saw a blue spark in the back of my neck. And he said that his soul, I guess if that’s what you want to call it, went into my body and then all of a sudden, a big blue wall came up and bounced him out. So that was the story from his point of view. I just had my own experience. And you know what? I think I’m normally skeptical, and if I can come up with any other explanation, I will. I have no idea what happened, but it was made more real to me when I realized it without my saying anything. He experienced something also, something very strange.

Jim Harold (01:00:13):
Now, in your email, you said after this experience that you felt a deep spiritual connection to him going forward, right?

Kim (KY) (01:00:22):
Yes. You know what I did? I felt like I just knew who he was deep inside. I felt like that. And for many years we were connected and I mean, sometimes I think there were strange things, like something would, he’d say something told him to call me if I was thinking about him, that would kind of line up maybe. I don’t know how that works, but sometimes when you’re thinking of somebody and they can kind of hear it.

Jim Harold (01:00:51):
Yeah. Well, the thing is that I definitely think that is, we’ve recently had a lot of calls of people with that kind of connection with somewhere where they literally will see each other maybe being a hundred, 200 miles away, actually see the person or even further distances. Also, we had a story very early on in the Campfire. It was in one of the, books one or two of our Campfire books, and it was about this gentleman in Australia and he was sitting with a friend of his, and they weren’t like taking any substances or anything, they were just drinking tea and there was a heater on and it was making kind of a whooshing noise. It was very calm environment, and they’re sitting drinking tea and looking at each other, and all of a sudden their faces started to change. And it’s like that old video, Michael Jackson, black or White, the one where the folks change into faces of people from different cultures and so forth, and the faces on both sides, both ways were changing that way. They made some kind of deep spiritual connection, and it allowed them to see all these different, I guess, sides of the individual. I don’t know, but it kind of reminds me a little of your story that you guys had made such a deep spiritual connection that something very unusual happened.

Kim (KY) (01:02:14):
Yes, and I mean, for a couple decades, I mean, we were connected. He’d just come and show up, I mean, and when I lived in other states and just once in a while, like checking in.

Jim Harold (01:02:27):
Yep. I believe those connections do exist. Kim, and thank you for sharing your story today of yours.

Kim (KY) (01:02:35):
Thank you.

Jim Harold (01:02:36):
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Announcer (01:04:38):
You are listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Jim Harold (01:04:41):
Well, we’ve had a lot of unique people on the show, but we’ve never had someone who’s worked at a haunted castle – that is, until today, Jess is on the line from New Jersey and she works in a haunted castle and she’s got a lot to tell us. Jess, welcome to the show. This sounds fascinating. Tell us about this haunted castle.

Jess (NJ) (01:05:02):
Yeah, so the story goes that, so this was originally owned by the Johnson family, Johnson and Johnson, and I believe they’re the ones that had it built, but they ended up selling it. And this family called the Farmers moved in and there was Charles and Barbara Farmer. And apparently Charles went a little bit crazy and ended up murdering his wife, Barbara, inside the castle. He shot and killed her. Their lawyer happened to be there and witnessed it. He’s now apparently like a judge in Monroe.

Jim Harold (01:05:40):
So this is in relatively recent history, this murder.

Jess (NJ) (01:05:44):
Yeah. I forget when this, I think this happened in the sixties.

(01:05:49):
So there’s been, prior to me, I’ve worked there for four years and they tell you during the interview basically that it’s a haunted castle. I was a little uneasy about it. I was a little nervous at first because I have a history of I hear auditory things that always freaked me out. So I was a little bit nervous and I kind of just sensed stuff. So it had a very heavy feeling to me, and I was a little bit nervous about it at first, but I started there and then I was very open to people and told them, I’m a little nervous about this. I believe in all of this stuff. And then that’s when people start to open up and tell you stories about stuff that has happened there. So my personal experience, there’s a new section of the castle and then there’s the original section. So I always felt like, all right, if I stay in the new section, I’ll be okay. But I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case. I’ve still heard stuff in the news side. The basement is very creepy. We have a maintenance guy that has reported being shoved downstairs in the basement while he’s been doing work, and he refuses to go down there.

(01:07:06):
We had another woman who said when they worked on the third floor, she was talking to a vendor and there was a kitchen up there, and she looked to the kitchen and she saw a woman in a black dress walk into the kitchen, and she told the vendor, would you mind holding on a minute? I have to go help this woman. I don’t know. She just walked into the kitchen and when she walked over there, there was nobody there, me personally. So I sit in a cubicle in the new section and the one day there’s an office right behind my cubicle. It’s the only office, and you have to walk right by the opening in my cube to get into that office. And I was just sitting there doing work, and my coworker wasn’t there that day and the light was off in his office.

(01:07:51):
And out of my peripheral, I saw somebody walk by and I sat and thought about it for a minute because I was like, well, he’s not here today. And then I heard a paper rustle in the office and I was waiting for the light to go on and it didn’t. So I sat there for a minute waiting, thinking maybe somebody dropped something off in his office waiting for somebody to walk out and nobody walked out. So I immediately went to one of my other coworkers and I said, you need to get in there and go check it out, because something happened. Somebody walked in there and obviously there was nobody there.

(01:08:27):
There was another day where there was, the owner of the company passed away and everybody was going to his funeral service and everything. And I was basically the only person that didn’t go. I lost my dad 10 years ago and I have a really tough time attending any type of funeral service, extra hard for me. So I was like, all right, I’m just going to stay. And they respected that and I was there by myself. I know that there was nobody there. The only way to basically come in is this one is the main door, and it’s a very heavy wooden castle door, and it’s very loud. So when anybody is coming in and it’s not too far from where my desk is, so I knew that there was nobody there. And as the day went on, I heard a desk chair moving around. It’s almost like that plastic if you know when you sit in a desk chair, you just kind of know that sound that the desk chair makes.

(01:09:23):
And I heard the desk chair making a sound. I heard a door upstairs slamming closed. Well, it was either upstairs or downstairs. I couldn’t tell. But I heard a door slammed closed and I heard whistling. And when I heard the whistling, I was like, Nope, I’m done. And I was like, it’s just about time for me to leave. I’m going, and I was done. So yeah, I mean that’s basically it, those are the experiences that, oh, and I actually, somebody said hello to me recently also. I heard a woman’s voice. I had my headphones in. I was listening to a podcast or something. I was in the kitchen upstairs and I was kind of in the corner of the kitchen and I heard a woman’s voice say hello. And I was just like, okay, I’m going to leave the kitchen now. I’m not going to hang out here. And I went back to my desk. This has happened to me for years, and my dad used to tell me that I was crazy. You’re hearing things, you’re crazy. But it’s always auditory for me, and it’s to the point where I think to myself, did I really hear that? But now I just know. I’m like, yes, I did.

Jim Harold (01:10:36):
How do your coworkers feel about working in a haunted place? Do they just kind of accept it or does it freak them out, or how do they feel about it?

Jess (NJ) (01:10:44):
There’s a lot of people that just don’t care. I don’t know. I think they’re very skeptical. They don’t necessarily believe in it. They’ve heard the stories, but there are people that are like, oh yeah, I’m not going down there by myself. I’m not going in the basement by myself. And I used to be that way. We have a gym in the basement, and I never wanted to go down there by myself. I always wanted to make sure there was somebody else working out down there. But something has changed in me and I’m just not that scared anymore. I’ve kind of just put up this block and I’m just kind of leave me alone. So I’ll go down there by myself, but there’s still people that won’t go down there by themselves.

Jim Harold (01:11:22):
Do you have any theories on, because I know that you’ve done a lot of research on the place and so forth. Do you have a theory why they’re still haunting it? Do you think it’s because of the horrible stuff that happened? Is it to make peace? Is it because they like the place and miss it? Do you have any theories on why?

Jess (NJ) (01:11:40):
I have no theories. What I was listening to is that there’s this podcast that did a thing on No Man’s Land, and it’s apparently this area where the castle is. This hill is just, it’s like the hill that it’s on, and the woods are like, there’s lots of paranormal activity. They say it’s cursed. I don’t know. Lots of really weird things have happened. They think that it didn’t even start with the murder in the castle. They think that there’s been a lot of bad stuff that has happened right there. What did they say? It goes back like 400 years or something. The history of that area, the bad things that have happened right there. So I’m not totally sure. I know one of the mediums that was on that podcast mentioned that it was Mr. Farmer that was haunting there, and I’m guessing that his wife is still there. Mrs. Farmer, my guess was she was the woman in the black dress that my coworker saw. Not really sure, but I mean, she could have been the one I heard that said hello too. I am not really sure.

Jim Harold (01:12:53):
Yeah. Well, I hope you’ll stay in touch. If you see anything else dramatic, please do call back in.

Jess (NJ) (01:13:00):
Well, I’m hoping I don’t see anything.

Jim Harold (01:13:02):
Well, for your sake, I hope you don’t either. I always say some people like, oh, I hope they see something, so they’ll call back. No, if you don’t want to see anything, I don’t want you to see anything.

Jess (NJ) (01:13:12):
Well, and that’s my thing. I always go, I know you’re there. I don’t need you to show me anything. I don’t need to see anything. I’ve seen enough.

Jim Harold (01:13:17):
I’ve seen enough. Yep. I mean, I think that would be me. I wouldn’t mind seeing something once necessarily, but I wouldn’t want to be truly haunted by it where it was bugging me all the time or that kind of thing. That would bug me. That would bother me too.

Jess (NJ) (01:13:31):
Yeah, I think it’s kind of giving me those reminders like, Hey, we’re still here. And that’s kind of what happens every once in a while.

Jim Harold (01:13:38):
Right. Well, Jess, thank you so much. And you are the first person we’ve talked to on the show who works in an actually haunted castle. Thank you for joining us today on the Campfire.

Jess (NJ) (01:13:49):
No problem. Take care.

Jim Harold (01:13:50):
Next up on the Campfire is Sarah from Nevada, and we’ve had a lot of stories over the years on this show, 15 years about now, and we’ve never had one like this, and it’s pretty wild. Sarah, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Sarah (NV) (01:14:07):
Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I still

(01:14:10):
Don’t know what to make of this experience other than I think I saw the power of God with my own eyes, but it was so physically real in this plane of existence I’m talking to you on. It wasn’t through my spiritual eyes or something I imagined. So I’m still open to the possibility of other explanations, but all I can think is I saw the power of God. So when I was about 10 years old, we’d been going to this Christian Church for a few months in Yucaipa, California. And it wasn’t unlike any of the churches that we had gone to before, but this church was the most intense one. And it actually really scared me as a kid because the intensity of the prayer sessions were on another level. People would be really loud and they would be yelling and rebuking Satan, just really passionate Christ to God to fill the person with his spirit, set them free, whatever it was, ailing them, whatever was making them sick.

Jim Harold (01:15:10):
It sounds like a Pentecostal type church, a Pentecostal church,

Sarah (NV) (01:15:14):
Maybe. My parents tried a whole bunch of different denominations. I think they were just trying to find what they really vibed with. We went to a lot of different churches, but this one always stuck out in my mind. So this one, people would pray in tongues a lot, and I don’t know if you know, but people would fall down under the spirit of God.

Jim Harold (01:15:32):
Oh, I know. I’ve seen it in person, yes.

Sarah (NV) (01:15:34):
Okay. So I’m 10 years old witnessing this, and it’s just a lot for a kid to be seeing. My parents never made us do anything and didn’t make us participate, but I was just nervous that I would ever potentially be made to participate, and I didn’t want to.

(01:15:52):
It was just too much for a kid. So I was usually just a passive observer, mostly just trying to pass a time drawing on one of those church bulletin papers and just kind of looking up whenever things get weirder or louder than usual. So one of these days, I’m sitting there with my sister, she’s eight years old, and we’re really close to the front of the room where all the prayer was happening. And my vantage point was from a seated position, about 45 degree angle away from this event, sorry, 45 angle degree, 20 feet away from what I’m about to describe, no obstructions. I could see everything clearly. I was not sleepy. I was wide awake as I had been from that morning. I wasn’t sick, no fever. I was not on medications, neither did I need to be for anything. Just totally normal little 10-year-old girl.

(01:16:43):
So people were really getting into the spirit of God and praying and falling down under the spirit. And at one point, this woman, I don’t know her name, I’ll call her Jennifer, she approaches the front of the room where people were welcome to go to receive prayer. I didn’t know Jennifer. She’s just another adult. And so she approaches another woman named, I’ll call her Rose again. She was also just another adult, didn’t really know her. And so Jennifer approaches rose. They exchanged some words, and Rose begins the prayer by reaching out her hand to touch Jennifer, because in this church, they really believed in the laying of hands. When Jesus would lay hands on someone to heal them, all it took was a touch. And so I don’t know if it was just like a symbolic gesture, but I saw something very, very real. When Rose laid her hand on Jennifer, I saw with my human eyeballs on this physical everyday plane of existence, I saw an electrical discharge, like a thin lightning bolt appear out of the ceiling over Rose’s head.

(01:17:48):
And it was like a typical lightning discharge with the really irregular horizontal flow, slightly arc shaped. It was a white color. I didn’t see it travel from the ceiling into Rose. It just appeared and disappeared like a typical lightning strike, does it just for a second. And the bolt stretched from the ceiling two rows out of Rose’s hand and into Jennifer where it stopped. It didn’t go past Jennifer. Jennifer immediately physically fell down, presumably under the spirit of the Lord, and Rose continued to pray for her. As she’s laying on the carpet, my understanding is that when the spirit of God enters someone, their physical body is overwhelmed and they can’t stand anymore. It just overtakes them and they kind of fall down under a deep meditative prayer like state.

(01:18:39):
But I was always told that the energy of God is always within us. So I don’t know if this is a different higher level vibration because I don’t know. I assume someone was there to catch her because mostly they would send somebody up with somebody who was going for prayer to catch them as they fell back, so they didn’t hurt themselves. I was so focused on this lightning bolt. I don’t really remember if anyone caught Jennifer. Yeah. So Jennifer kind of just fell down. One of those gentle kind of trust falls. She wasn’t blown backward. There was no jolt of lightning into Jennifer from the electricity. There was no sound, no smell of ozone. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel any electrical static or anything. No one said anything, which I kind of got angry about. I’m like, is no one seeing this? No one’s going to do something about this. All you adults are supposed to be responsible. No one saw this. And so I know I told my parents, and they were like, oh, that’s really cool. You saw the spirit of the Lord and your spiritual eyes. And I was like, no. I saw with my eyes that lightning, that lightning bolt.

(01:19:49):
So I was not one of those really imaginative kids that thought they saw something and then told themselves enough times that they saw it until it became their reality. That’s not who I was. I’ve never really been that way. I’ve always wished I was somebody that could see ghosts and spirits, but still never have to this day, maybe one day. For me, it was just always this strange thing that I saw.

Jim Harold (01:20:15):
Well, I mean, it boils down to this. I’ve talked to people who before are maybe let’s say of the Christian faith, and I feel I can say that because I’m of the Christian faith, and even despite doing these shows and every kind of thing we talk about, I’m still the Christian faith, although I’m probably not what most people would think of as a quote, good Christian, but I still believe in the main tenets. But let me say this, I mean, people say, oh, I go to church every Sunday, and I really believe in that, but I don’t believe in any of the supernatural stuff. And I’m like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. The very tenant of your religion of Christianity is supernatural in nature. So to me, if you believe in God, which I do, and I don’t want to get religious on anybody, and I’m not going to start proselytizing or anything, but I believe in God. If you believe in God, you by definition pretty much believe in a supernatural being who is capable of doing supernatural things.

Sarah (NV) (01:21:14):
And that’s what I think I saw. I think I saw the actual power of God manifest here on this physical plane. And for whatever reason, maybe I was a kid, my eyes were open enough to see it while the adults couldn’t. And I don’t think I was open to a suggestion because at that age, the suggestion to me was that God was a beautiful grandfatherly, all knowing apparition, kind of like a ghostly spirit is what I would imagine if someone were to be talking about you seeing God. What I saw was a lightning bolt coming from drop tile ceilings into people in the congregation that had never been suggested to me before. So I didn’t make this up. I hadn’t been told this idea from someone else and then put it into my own head. It was either that or some really bad building code violation that no one saw was never duplicated, was never addressed. I don’t think that’s what the case was. I think I saw the power of God.

Jim Harold (01:22:14):
Very interesting. Well, thank you so much for sharing a unique story, Sarah, and being a part of the Campfire today.

Sarah (NV) (01:22:21):
Yeah, thank you so much for giving me a place to talk about this. And yeah, keep doing what you’re doing. We love all your shows.

Jim Harold (01:22:29):
Well, you might remember a few weeks ago, Jessica was on the line from Utah telling us about weird things that happened when she watched the movie, the Exorcism of Emily Rose. Thankfully, for our hearts, this story is not quite so spooky, a little more sweet, I would say. Jessica, welcome back to the show. Thank you for joining us. And tell us about these signs from past loved ones.

Jessica (UT) (01:22:55):
Yeah, this one, this one’s a little more dear and tender to my heart. So my grandma passed away about three years ago

Jessica (UT) (01:23:05):
In a couple of weeks. Actually, it’ll probably have passed by the time this show airs, but she and I were very close. My mother passed when I was quite young, and she only had the one daughter, and she kind of took me in as a surrogate daughter. And so I surpassed that place as granddaughter, and we were very close, as I said. And when I moved further north, she kind of followed me and my family. And in the later years of her life, I became her primary caregiver. And about three years ago, she suffered a stroke, which did lead to her pretty rapid but not untimely death. Now, prior to her passing, she had grown up in foster care and things like that during the 1940s, right after the Great Depression and things like that. And so she was a bit of a hoarder, and I say a bit of a hoarder, and I mean a really big hoarder kept expired food from the nineties, but we weren’t allowed to touch or throw out anything.

(01:24:14):
Now after she passed, as you can imagine, this became a bit of a struggle. And my sister came up to help me sort through some things and start thinning through her collection because she had an odd habit of putting really precious things inside of really mundane things. So you might find cash inside of books. You might find jewelry inside of mason jars. So you needed to open everything before you decided to throw it out. So we had emptied out one of her storage units to cut down on some of her costs and put it in the garage, and we were making a donate pile and a throwaway pile and a keep pile. And my sister had helped me get this process started, and I was there by myself, and I need to back up a little bit. As she was passing, I was sitting with my grandma, and it was in a kind of a quiet moment, and as I said, she’d had the stroke.

(01:25:22):
So she wasn’t really communicating, and if she was communicating, it was kind of gibberish. It was nonsense. I didn’t know if anything I was saying made any sense to her. What she was saying didn’t make any sense to me. We were kind of in that no man’s land of communication. But at one point, very near the end, I held her hand and I said, grandma, when you get where you’re going, just send me a sign that you’re okay. Just send me a sign. And I said, the first thing that came to my mind, I said, send me a blue button and I’ll know you’re okay. So I’m sitting there a week or two after she’s, and I’m going through some of these old things, and as I said, I’m overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. And I happened to open an Altoid tin just to make sure there was nothing valuable inside of it, but there were two blue buttons inside of, and I set them in the save pile because I turned to my husband. I said, look, Dustin, here are my blue buttons. And we agreed that that was kind of my sign, and I set them in the save pile, and I have never seen them again.

Jim Harold (01:26:36):
Yeah, it’s interesting. And that’s interesting. You never saw them again. It was like they were there for a moment to get their point across and then they work on,

Jessica (UT) (01:26:45):
Right.

Jim Harold (01:26:45):
Yeah. I believe it happens. I believe their loved ones leave signs. And what I often say, and I know you’re a long time listener of the show to me, they leave signs. They’re very specific to us, and we’ll know what they mean. And they might not mean anything at all to anybody else.

Jessica (UT) (01:27:04):
Right? I mean, there were just blue buttons.

Jim Harold (01:27:06):
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Now, you also had what may have been a sign from your mom, possibly, right?

Jessica (UT) (01:27:14):
Right. And I wasn’t sure exactly who left me the sign, but I did have, we were going through more boxes of things. And I had found, like I said, she passed when I was very young, and I didn’t get to know her very well. We were going through a box of her old wedding memorabilia, and it was a mix of nostalgia. And a bunch of this is stuff that should have gotten thrown out 40 years ago, but it was catering receipts, but there were also engagement pictures in there. And so I got to see some of those fun things and old wedding invitations, like dozens and dozens of copies of those. And just as I was about to set this pile of papers aside and say, okay, I’m finished with this.

(01:28:06):
My husband who was looking at papers next to me across the bed, lept up, he’d been shocked. And I looked at him and he looked at me and he was baffled, and I was really confused. And I was like, what? And he was like, did you just tap my foot? And I was like, I’m sitting up by the pillows, and his feet were hanging off the bed because he had shoes on, so he didn’t want to get the bed dirty. And I was like, no, I didn’t touch your foot. Your foot is six feet away from me. And he’s like, that was so weird. Somebody just ran their finger down the tread of my foot and then tapped it three times really fast. And I said, that is really weird. But in his commotion of jumping up, he had dropped all of my papers all over the floor. And what he unearthed when I was picking it up was this bridal game, bridal shower game of get to know the bride. And so it was kind of a fun, get to know my mom kind of thing. I had never really gotten to see any of those answers, what her favorite color was, and favorite type of foods and things like that. So that was kind of fun too,

Jim Harold (01:29:20):
How cool that is. Yes. I know from your previous story, spooky scary, but I believe that this side exists to the paranormal as well. I think it’s a continuum, just like our own world. You’ve got the very kind of sweet and positive stories, and you’ve got some that maybe have a little more sinister energy to them. And thank you for sharing this sweet story or these sweet stories tonight.

Jessica (UT) (01:29:44):
Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me again.

Jim Harold (01:29:47):
Thank you so much for tuning into the Campfire. I certainly appreciate it. I’ve been busy around here in the Spooky studio, wrapping up Campfire Six, that print and ebook that will be coming out on May 7th. And thank goodness it looks like everything is lining up and it will be released on that date. So stay tuned for that. That will be the sixth installment in our Campfire books. But don’t worry, you can read them in any order. So if you haven’t read the first five, well, you can dive in now and try to read all five before the sixth one comes out. Or if you simply want to wait, you could do that too and start with book six. You don’t have to read them in any certain order, and that’ll be on Amazon. And this time, book six should be available in other outlets, not just Amazon, around the world.

(01:30:36):
So that’ll be kind of fun. We’re going wide with this release, so please, when it comes out, make sure you have it marked. It is not online yet. It’s not up for pre-order or anything quite yet, but we’re working on all of that stuff. But it will definitely be released by May 7th, so we’re excited about that. I hope you stay tuned. Hope you check out our merch store too at Jim Harold dot com slash merch. Click on the Etsy option to get all that customized Mother’s Day apparel I told you about earlier, and candles too, and much more. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week. Stay safe and stay spooky. Bye-Bye.

Announcer (01:31:15):
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.

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