A ghost nanny, a father saves his daughter’s life from beyond the grave and much more spookiness on this edition of the Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

JIM HAROLD: The ghost of a nanny headlines this edition of the Campfire.

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

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you today. A couple of news and notes before we get started with some great Campfire stories.

First of all, I’m very excited. Monster Fest is coming up this weekend. There’s going to be the premiere of a Small Town Monsters movie on Friday night, and then we’re going to be in Canton, Ohio, for the Monster Fest on Saturday, doing a meetup also with the Astonishing Legends guys on Saturday evening. Scott and Forrest, great friends. Really looking forward to that. So if you’re in driving distance of Canton, Ohio, I highly recommend that you take advantage of that. You can find that information at smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest. That’s smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest.

And if you’re hearing this before the event on Friday night and then Saturday all day, June 2nd and June 3rd, please show up and attend, because the Small Town Monsters guys are great people and the cryptid community, Seth Breedlove and his team do a fantastic job. They have all of my admiration. So please support them.

Now on to a different topic that is not connected at all. As you know – or if you’ve been listening, as you may know, we have been planning a tour of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh later in the month. That tour has been cancelled. Honestly, the ticket sales – we did have some ticket sales, yes, and first of all, sincerely thank you to each and every one of you who purchased tickets. You will be refunded promptly. But that tour has been cancelled because honestly the ticket sales just weren’t sufficient to support the tour. We were ambitious. We were going to be using a tour manager. We had assistants so we could come in and focus on doing the show and not having to worry about the logistics and those kind of things. And there’s travel. We live in the Midwest; this was in the Northeast and some pretty expensive markets.

We needed pretty strong ticket sales to support it. That didn’t happen, so unfortunately we had to cancel. Again, everyone will be refunded. I know that at least some of the venues have already sent out emails, if not probably all of them by the time you hear this. Again, sorry it didn’t go off, but rest assured these shows will continue. There is no change in what I’m doing. I’m very enthused about the future. I’ve got some projects going up I’m very excited about.

So yeah, is it a little bit of an ego hit? Sure. But live and learn. There’s no one who has ever had any kind of creative endeavor or business or whatever it might be that hasn’t had something not work out the way they want it to. That’s just part of doing the work. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. And what I’ve always tried to do is pick myself off, dust myself off, see what I could’ve done better, and try, try again. So maybe someday down the road. I think it’s going to be a little while, though. I’ve got to let my bruised ego heal a little bit. [laughs] But regardless, the important thing is that we are here, Campfire’s here, Campfire will continue to b here, and we have great stories like this one.

Chris is on the line from Los Angeles. We’re so glad to have him, and he’s going to tell us about a very special dream. I love these kinds of stories. Chris, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

CHRIS: Hey, Jim. My dream occurred maybe four or five months ago, October/November. It was one of those dreams where you wake up and you can’t remember it immediately, but then later in the morning it hits you. I was sitting there at work trying to remember what the dream was. I drove past something that reminded me of my grandpa. Usually when I think of my grandpa, I think of my great-grandparents as well, because I got to know my great-grandmother growing up, but I never got to know my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather died a couple years before I was born, but everyone says we’re very similar, we would’ve been super close, have all the same interests, things like that.

So I’m sitting there at work and that’s when I start remembering the dream. In this dream, I’m sitting on a porch swing. I don’t recognize where I am initially. Then I hear an old man’s voice saying, “Hey, how are you doing?” Then I see this gentleman come up and sit down next to me. I still very vividly remember what he looked like. He had a short crew cut, bright white hair, big glasses, a gold watch halfway up his wrist, a flannel shirt, and blue Dickies. I remember exactly what he was wearing.

We’re sitting there on this porch swing and he and I start talking. He starts asking me, “How was the wedding? How’s your mom doing? How’s your dad doing? How are your aunts?” All kinds of questions. I didn’t think anything of it, but we were having this nice conversation, and he’s very much leading this conversation. They’re genuinely vague, and then he starts getting into more specifics. He says, “How did your dad end up liking California?” My dad’s originally from Arkansas and then moved out to California when he joined the Army. Then he asks, “Did you always like spending time with Robbie?” Robbie was my grandfather’s name. He always went by Bob, but only his parents called him Robbie.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

CHRIS: So we’re having this lovely conversation with this guy and I don’t recognize him. It feels like the conversation goes on for hours. Towards the end he says, “Hey, I really wish we could’ve done this more. I’m glad you got to meet Dolly, though.” Dolly was my great-grandmother. Then he says, “I hope we can do this again soon one day. I love you.” He starts walking away from the porch swing, and that’s when I start noticing where I am. I’m at my great-grandparents’ house. I know it’s my great-grandparents’ house because it’s actually still in my family. My cousin lives there. I spent a lot of time growing up in that house or spending summers there. My dad grew up in that house. So I immediately recognized it as he’s walking towards the trees on the back of the property.

After I remembered everything that happened in this dream, I was like, “I think I just spoke” – we called him Paw-Dad. I was like, “I think I was speaking to Paw-Dad.” I immediately call up my dad. It’s my dad’s paternal grandfather. I text him, “Hey, do you have any pictures of Paw-Dad?” He said, “Sure, I’ll check. Check with your aunts too.” I said, “Okay.” I text my aunts and all around the same time, I get a few different pictures. I’d never once seen a picture of what my great-grandfather looked like. My dad doesn’t have them because my dad moved around a bit growing up. My grandparents did not have any pictures of him anywhere in the house for whatever reason. And my great-grandmother lost all of the pictures she had of him.

The only thing I ever knew about him was that my dad always said he wore blue Dickies and a flannel shirt every day except for Sunday.

JIM HAROLD: Like Dickies the work pants.

CHRIS: Dickies work pants and a flannel shirt every single day. So they hand me this picture and it is the exact same gentleman from my dream. Same glasses, same gold watch worn halfway up his forearm, the blue Dickies, a red plaid flannel shirt. Of course, because he’s my grandfather’s father, he looks just like my grandfather. I start freaking out. I’m on Facetime with my dad and I start crying a little bit. My dad’s like, “What’s wrong?” I was like, “I had a dream about Paw-Dad, and we were talking and he was getting to know me.”

Oh, and during the dream he had also mentioned another thing to tell my dad. He said, “Hey, tell him I’m sorry about the fishhook.” My dad started laughing, because when my dad was little, his dad and grandfather took him fishing and my dad got my great-grandfather in the back of the neck with a fishhook.

JIM HAROLD: Ooh.

CHRIS: Not a whole lot of people know that story.

JIM HAROLD: Right. All that stuff is affirmational and confirms it was really him.

CHRIS: Yeah. It was the craziest thing, because like I said, I’ve never met him. I’d never once seen a picture of him. But I was able to pick him out. It was a picture of him with all of his siblings, or him at a company picnic or something, and I picked him out in every single photo.

JIM HAROLD: That’s amazing.

CHRIS: My dad said, “That was my grandfather.”

JIM HAROLD: I’ve got to believe that has to make you and your family feel really good.

CHRIS: Oh, it was one of the best gifts I’ve had in a long time.

JIM HAROLD: And you’ve given us the gift of a great story. The thing is, folks, the Campfire sometimes can be frightening and chilling, and sometimes it can be a beautiful thing in some of these beautiful stories that we get like this one. Chris, thank you so much for sharing this fantastic story. Absolutely loved it.

CHRIS: Thank you so much for having me, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the show is Laura from Maryland. We’re so glad to have her, and she’s going to start off by telling us of a ghost encounter. Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

LAURA: Thank you so much for having me. This was back in 1987. It’s a little town up in the Piedmont region of Maryland, and I was staying with two friends who lived in one of the older houses up there. My understanding of the town is that there was a big fire in 1867 and the whole town burned down.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

LAURA: So most of the old houses were rebuilt around then. Anyway, I stayed the night, and I had heard stories that this house was haunted and it was a woman. I was asleep, and I woke up – I don’t know what woke me up, but I opened my eyes and there was a woman standing next to the bed.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

LAURA: I could see her very clearly. I’ll continue with the story. I opened my eyes again and she was gone. I didn’t tell anybody about it. About a week later, I was talking to the guy that lives in the house and I said, “I didn’t tell you what happened,” and he said, “You saw her.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Green dress, white shawl, blonde hair?” I said, “Yes.” [laughs] I have chills just thinking about it. She was in color. She had long blonde hair and an apron and a shawl and a long green dress in an early Victorian style. And she was smiling at me.

My understanding in talking to him is that the upstairs of the house was a nursery at one point and that she was the nanny, so she would check on the children, and I guess she was endearing. She loved the children and she was taking care of the people upstairs on the third floor of this house.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. That’s something else, to have the history too and that verification from that gentleman. That’s something else. Unprompted.

LAURA: Yeah. You did the interview with Leslie Rule recently.

JIM HAROLD: Yes, on the Paranormal Podcast.

LAURA: I would love to talk to her and see if she would be interested in doing some research on it because I would love to know who this was.

JIM HAROLD: She definitely does great work. And I know you also said you had a run-in with the Grim Reaper?

LAURA: Yes. That’s the only way I can refer to him. I went through a period where I would know when someone was dying. Not specifically who, but I would know someone from work was dying. I would have a dream and I’d go into work the next day and they’d say, “We had a death.” We had 1,500 employees, so I didn’t know them all, but this happened about three times that I recall.

There was a day in June of 2012. It was around June 8th. I was in my kitchen, and I didn’t have a ceiling fan or anything in the kitchen. I’d lived in this house for 12 years. And all of a sudden, everything blew off the counter, and I felt a dark presence. I ran out of the kitchen, I ran into my husband, and he was like, “What are you doing?” I said, “Everything just blew off the counter. There’s something in there.” He said, “No, it was just a fan.” He was trying to write it off.

My husband died of a massive heart attack three days later. He was 50 years old.

JIM HAROLD: I’m sorry. Wow.

LAURA: I started thinking about it, and it was like, oh, I kind of knew that was coming. Then a few years later, in 2014, I had to go to the hospital. I had clots in my lungs. I’m sitting in the hospital and I see the dark presence again, and it goes through the room. I just looked at my daughter and I said, “Somebody’s dying in here.” She said, “It’s a hospital. People die in hospitals.” I said, “No, this is an unusual one. I just saw it again.”

About 10 minutes later, you hear that death wail that people do when they lose somebody really dear to them. A woman drove over her 18-month-old nephew, and they came in to the hospital and found out that he had died. I kind of saw that coming.

This presence stayed with me for the night. I imagine it like a gargoyle outside my hospital room. I knew something was out there, and I knew that he was either waiting for me or he was just there. I’ve seen things, I’ve felt things, but those are the two that really get me.

JIM HAROLD: Well yeah, of course, both those things are horrible with your husband and then this young boy. How do you feel about that? I mean, is there any positive to it? I couldn’t imagine there’d be –

LAURA: It wasn’t malicious. It was just a presence. Yeah, it was dark, but it’s like it had a job to do. I know I’m sounding crazy. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: No, not at all.

LAURA: But I had to ask it to step away from me because I knew it was around, and it’s like, “I can’t do this.” I had to get some peace from the dreams that I would have and from just knowing things like that.

JIM HAROLD: I’m reminded of that old Twilight Zone with Robert Redford before he became super famous, and he played the Grim Reaper and this lady would not let him in her place, but she let him in, I think, and – but you know, sometimes things are legends or archetypes because there’s truth to them. Who am I to say? There very well may be a real Grim Reaper, and perhaps you’ve seen it. It gives us something to think about.

LAURA: I was just going to say I do believe that there are entities out there that help us to cross over and do work that we don’t necessarily want to talk about or think about.

JIM HAROLD: Makes sense. Laura, again, thank you for being on the show. I appreciate it.

LAURA: Thank you so much for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Rocket Money. Have you heard the old saw “Try it free for 30 days! What a deal!”? That’s just enough time to try something – and then completely forget about it. In fact, over 80% of people have subscriptions they’ve forgotten about, and you could be wasting money and not even realizing it. Rocket Money helps you find those forgotten subscriptions, and it zaps them so you can stop paying for the ones that you don’t use. After all, rising prices are stressing us all out. We need a friend in our corner to help us cut costs, and that friend is Rocket Money.

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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 in to the Paranormal Podcast today. Now, we return to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the podcast, we have one of those stories that really, really sticks with you. I’ve got to say, this is one that I don’t think you’ll soon forget. Teri is on the line from New England. She’s a Plus Club member, so if you want to be like Teri and go back and get the whole archive of the Campfire, go to jimharoldplus.com. Teri is going to share this story, and it’s a very, very interesting one. Teri, thank you for joining us. I know we had some tech issues, so thanks for hanging with us, and tell us what happened.

TERI: Thank you, Jim. I appreciate you sticking with me. This is a story about my dad. He passed away 10 years ago, after an illness. He’s an Ohio boy like you, Jim, and grew up around there. Eh had a healthy skepticism but also a love of UFOs and things otherworldly that he passed on to me. Like you, we watched In Search Of… when I was a kid. He loved the UFO stuff, I loved the ghost stuff; together, we really enjoyed the show.

My dad was a geologist by training, so scientific and used to being a skeptic, but he also had this philosophy that was pretty much, who are we to say that we’re the only beings in the universe? Why wouldn’t there be? We don’t know everything, so let’s be open to the possibility. I’d always tried to keep that in mind too.

So when my dad passed 10 years ago, I was able to spend a lot of time with him and my mom, and then afterward I was able to stay with my mom for a couple of weeks to help her organize things and get things settled. But I needed to get back to New England because my oldest was graduating from high school. So I had a week in between when I left Mom’s and she was coming up for the graduation, my in-laws were coming in from the Midwest. We were going to have a party. I was out getting party supplies.

As I’m getting off the highway back in my town, there’s two turn lanes where I could turn left. There was a firetruck in the left-hand lane, so I was in the right-hand left turn lane. The light’s red and I’m sitting there. I’m up at the front, and all of a sudden I hear my dad. He’s over my left shoulder, almost like he was backseat driving, and I heard him clear as day. He said, “Wait. Don’t go.”

I looked up at the light and it turned green, but I didn’t go. I normally – I don’t jump on the accelerator, but I normally would let a second go by. This time, no. I waited. It seemed like such a long time. In reality it was maybe four or five seconds, tops. I could not see to my left because the firetruck was there, and all of a sudden a white Jeep Cherokee came blasting through that red light. Had I gone, I would’ve been in the intersection and I would’ve been t-boned.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

TERI: And who knows? So I credit my dad with keeping me safe that day. I have chills just telling the story right now. It seems like it happened yesterday. At that point I looked up at the fireman in the firetruck, he looked at me, we just shook our heads. I let them go first, and then I turned when they turned because I figured he’s a lot bigger than me. He would stop anybody else who wanted to run the red light.

I got home and I unpacked my car and I sat down and tried to catch my breath and wrap my head around what had just happened. Not to make light of it, but the funny thing was the person behind me actually did not honk at me when the light turned green and I didn’t go.

JIM HAROLD: Interesting.

TERI: Yeah, that doesn’t normally happen around here. Yeah, so my dad saved my life that day.

JIM HAROLD: Any other communication like that from him since, or that was basically it? Which was a lot.

TERI: I’ve had some dreams since, and then one time I went to see a psychic. She was actually a medium, not a psychic. I guess she was a psychic medium. But he came through then. Apparently he was kind of pushy. I was in the middle of making a job change and I really wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go, and a friend of mine said, “Hey, come with me. I want you to go hear this woman. She does these readings.” I’m like, “Sure.” It was a group reading. My dad was kind of pushy because she was directed right to me. I was the first one she read. He told her to tell me to take the job but still have some fun, don’t work so hard that I’m not having any fun anymore. I took the job and five years later it’s been great. So that’s my other communication from my dad.

JIM HAROLD: Both great stories, but that first story, wow. And I can tell it in your voice – I’ll ask the question – you’re absolutely convinced that was him?

TERI: Absolutely convinced, yeah. I’ve had some other experiences with hauntings and phantom footsteps and that sort of thing, but I’m absolutely convinced that was my dad coming back to say “Hey, be careful.”

JIM HAROLD: Me too. I’m convinced as well. Well, thank you so much for your support, sharing this great story, and it’s really nice to know there’s somebody up there looking out for us.

TERI: Yes.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks again, and stay spooky!

TERI: Thanks, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Zoe is on the line from Maryland, and we’re so glad that she is. She’s been listening for years, and we’re so appreciative of that, and also her brother Chase, who is a Plus member, and we appreciate that very much as well. Zoe, I understand that you’re going to talk to us about a haunted theater.

ZOE: Yes, I am. I am going to keep the theater anonymous just because they don’t advertise themselves as being haunted, and I don’t want to detract from the amazing work that they’re doing.

JIM HAROLD: Sure.

ZOE: It’s pretty much known to everybody who’s worked there that the place is haunted. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had an experience there. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Cool.

ZOE: The theater has been around I believe since the ’60s, maybe even earlier than that. Definitely 70 years or more. Some of the things that happen there, you’ll see things out of the corner of your eye. Often you hear footsteps. A lot of people have seen doppelgangers, which is way more common than anywhere else I’ve ever heard of. I’ve experienced a couple of things there myself. My position was I was an assistant stage manager, and I was positioned on the stage left side of the stage, and I took care of guns and fire and all sorts of things. My side was usually pretty busy, but occasionally everyone would be on stage and it would just be me by myself.

Twice during that time, I have been touched. I’d be standing facing the stage and I would feel a hand in the middle of my back. Both times, I would whip around and look for somebody needing help or whomever, and nobody would ever be there, but it was very clear it was a very large male hand in the middle of my back.

Like I said, the space is known for being haunted. It’s in a Native American area, and they’re very spiritual. Part of why I’m keeping this anonymous is because it’s their practices and beliefs, and I don’t want to seem like I’m detracting from anything they’re doing there.

Other than being touched, I had another occasion when it was myself and three other technicians standing there talking while the show was going on, and I have a box on my side of the stage that hangs on the wall. It’s my stage manager’s box, and I keep all of my equipment and everything in there that I might need. On top was a roll of paper towels. We’re all standing probably about four to five feet away from this box with my back turned to it, and I feel something hit the back of my legs, and everyone just went quiet. I turned around and the paper towels are sitting right behind my feet.

They all saw it. I felt it, but they saw it fly it off the box and hit me. There was no way that it could’ve just rolled off or anything. There was a force behind it. So I don’t know. Nothing there seemed malevolent, which was nice. We all thought it was just playing games with us.

JIM HAROLD: I can tell you, I certainly believe theaters are – if you think about it, when there’s a lot of emotional energy, a place is supposedly more likely to be haunted. And if you think about emotional energy, anyone who’s been around stage people, they have a lot of energy, and out on stage, they play drama, they play comedy, every bit of human emotion. You’ve got to believe some of that stays in the place. Plus people who are in the theater love the theater, so if you believe in the concept of ghosts coming back to visit places that they love, I would think a theater that’s been around for a while would have a lot of visitors from the other side.

What do you think? Who or what do you think is haunting the theater?

ZOE: I absolutely agree with everything you just said. Especially this theater, the story that we were telling is so emotionally charged. We would have sessions where we would come together as a group and recollect on everything and calm each other down. It was a very nice space to be in. But yeah, I think generations of people coming and doing this show, I have no doubt in my mind that people don’t want to leave, and that actually leads me to another part of the story.

We have this game that we play with a ghost there. I laughed about it at first, but it’s so true. We call it the marble game. It’s believed that the old props master from the beginning of the show is still there. We have a space under the stage where technicians used to live. We don’t anymore; we have a separate housing area. But used to live there, and that’s where it’s believed that this props master lived, and he started a marble game. You’d find a marble when you were inducted into this little group. It was just a fun thing.

So summer of 2021, when I was there, it started happening. We had our own game going amongst the living, and these marbles were different. We had colored marbles, but suddenly certain people were finding pure white marbles, usually in spaces that only they would occupy. I had a very specific position that I took when I was watching over what we called fight calls to make sure everything’s going okay, pause when we need to and whatnot, and I was the only one that ever stood there. I walked to my spot after a bunch of rain one day, watching over everything, and I look down at some point and in between my feet is a pure white marble half sticking out of the mud.

I picked it up and I knew I’d been inducted into it. And there was maybe only – I’d say less than 15 of us that got it out of about 60 people.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my. Wow. So does that make you feel kind of special?

ZOE: It does. [laughs] I would go down and I would talk to the guy and be like, “Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the club.” Some people have even seen him. Sometimes you can hear him in the back rooms of the place, moving stuff around. He’s there and he’s very much a part of the place, and we all accept him and love that he’s around.

JIM HAROLD: That’s awesome. Yeah, my daughters, particularly my oldest daughter, did quite a bit of theater in high school and in college, my oldest daughter. Just something about those places, you just have a feeling. You walk into a theater and – I don’t know if you experience this, Zoe, but it’s just a different feeling. The room has a vibe. Do you feel that way?

ZOE: Absolutely. Again, like you said, with so much emotional energy somewhere, it’s going to leave impressions. I hope that when I die, I’d love to haunt a theater. That would be great. I’d love to be somebody’s ghost story. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: There you go. Well, hopefully, I’m sure that will be many, many years from now. About 100 years from now, maybe.

ZOE: I hope so.

JIM HAROLD: Zoe, thank you so much for being a part of the show, and again, to your brother Chase, and to you, a big stay spooky.

ZOE: Thank you so much, Jim. I appreciate it.

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JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Karen from Arizona. She’s been listening since 2018 and found out about us from that great podcast, And That’s Why We Drink. Christine and Em, always so kind to us. Karen’s going to take us back several years when her daughter was around the time she had been born, just a couple weeks old. She says she doesn’t know what category to put this in. Hmm, maybe it’s a headscratcher. Karen, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.

KAREN: Thank you, Jim. This story takes place back in 2015. The only reason why I remember that – it was back in March – is because my daughter was just a couple weeks old. It happened at night. It was really early in the morning, maybe around 2 a.m. I woke up and I was pretty much sleep paralysis. I couldn’t move. I could move my head, I could move my eyes, but I couldn’t move my body. I happened to glance up at a clock that was directly in front of my bed on the wall. I glanced up and I noticed it was around 2 a.m.

I look over to my right side, and that’s when my daughter was sleeping in a bassinet; she was asleep in a little bassinet right next to me on my right side so it was easy for me to roll over and look at her if she woke up or anything. So I look over, and in between the small little space between my bed and the bassinet, I saw a dark figure. No features, nothing like that, but it was just all black, dark figure. It was a little strange because it was a short figure. I would say no more than three or four feet tall. He wasn’t towering above me or anything. It was just next to me. But from what I could see, it was really thin. It had thin arms and a perfectly circular head. I couldn’t see that it had any hair or anything like that, or ears or anything. It was an oval head and a skinny, thin body.

I looked at it. Like I said, I couldn’t see any features or anything. I shut my eyes because I was so scared. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Just pure terror. It was really scary. I shut my eyes and I immediately started praying. That was my go-to. I started praying, and as soon as I shut my eyes, I saw a very bright light that I could see through my eyelids. My eyelids were shut, but I could see it like if I was looking at the sun. It was a very bright light. After I saw that light, I heard a very loud humming or whirring sound, but it was really loud to the point where my head was vibrating. Inside my head, it was knocking my brain, almost. It was so loud and just so potent. It took up the whole room.

After that happened, it just stopped. It suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes. I could move again. I looked over at the clock, and all of this had happened within seconds. I would say two to three seconds. It was really quick, really fast, but when I looked over at the clock, it had been about 45 minutes. I looked at the clock and it was like 2:45-2:50 in the morning. I was very confused. I was like, how could this happen? It was just seconds that this happened. It was just a quick glance, I shut my eyes, I saw the light, I heard the sound, and I woke up. But in reality it had been well over 40 minutes.

After that I got up out of bed, I turned on all the lights, and I was terrified. I had this feeling that it could possibly come back or something. I’m not exactly sure what happened. It’s never happened to me since. I had sleep paralysis when I was a kid, but nothing ever like that. I never saw anything, I never felt anything. I just woke up, couldn’t move, and that was it. But this time it was so completely different, and I’ve never experienced anything like that before or since. So that’s my story. It’s a short one for you.

JIM HAROLD: Is it fair to say there was a little bit of missing time in there between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m.? Is that right?

KAREN: Definitely. That was probably the biggest confusing part for me. It had all felt like it happened within just a few seconds. It was very quick, even to where I couldn’t really react or anything. I just shut my eyes, opened my eyes, and there was missing time. It wasn’t too much. I would say 30-40 minutes in between there. But still.

JIM HAROLD: In your note you mentioned specifically the short skinny figure with long thin arms with a perfectly oval head. I mean, that sounds like an alien Grey. Have you thought that maybe you had basically an alien encounter?

KAREN: I do. I’m kind of torn because I feel that in the way that it presented itself to me, in my head I thought, “This is like an alien.” But at that time I’m not sure if it was maybe a shadow figure that was presenting itself that way to me to scare me or get a reaction out of me. But that’s how I felt. With the light and then the whirring sound, I almost felt like it was an alien encounter.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, it’s one of those things. I’m sure that’s something that has stuck with you over the years since this has happened.

KAREN: Yeah, it stuck with me and I’ve remembered it just like it happened yesterday. And I don’t really have a great memory; I forget things a lot. But this experience has stuck with me for so many years. Like I said, for months after this happened to me, I was having trouble sleeping. I had this feeling it might come back. But thankfully I’ve never experienced anything like that since.

JIM HAROLD: And that’s a good thing, because that sounds like one of the more terrifying things that could happen. And then if you layer on that you have your newborn child there, that had to make it more frightening as well because you’re afraid for yourself, you’re probably also afraid for your child.

KAREN: Yeah, I was. I don’t know why I had a feeling like “Oh my God, it’s going to take her” or something like that. Thankfully, like I said, nothing happened after that. But it’s just stuck with me for so long, and I was so fearful for so many months after that just thinking about it, because it just felt so real, and it stuck with me to my core. Scary, scary situation. Like I said, I’m not sure if it was a shadow figure or if it was more of an alien encounter type thing. Either way, both of them are pretty scary.

JIM HAROLD: Indeed. Karen, thank you so much for sharing your story today on the Campfire.

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

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire we have a new listener and a new caller. Blake joins us from Vermont, and we appreciate it, particularly when somebody just starts out listening and they jump right in and tell their story. We appreciate that much. Be like Blake. Blake is going to tell us a story going back 15, 16, 17 years, in his mid-twenties, and he says it’s what many would describe as a demonic possession. Blake, thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.

BLAKE: Thank you so much for having me, Jim. I was visiting my brother in Colorado. I took the redeye from Hawaii, where I was, and I spent the first night in Colorado in his attic. He was in college at the time, so it was a big shared house. I was sleeping on cushions and blankets, nothing fancy. I’ve experienced sleep paralysis for most of my life on a fairly regular basis. This one, some would describe it as demonic possession; I’m sure others would describe it as a fairly intense sleep paralysis episode. I’ll let your listeners be the judge, so to speak.

This sleep paralysis episode or possession started out very different than any of my other sleep paralysis episodes. Whereas most of the time I would wake up into a sleep paralysis state, this one I fell into it from waking, transitioning into it. Where I would usually have visual hallucinations during my regular sleep paralysis, this one started completely different. It’s not easily described.

I teach neuroscience, and we talk about sensory modalities – vision, hearing, olfactory, somatosensory. In this one, I started to experience this phenomenon that’s not easily described by any of the five senses. To give your listeners the best idea that I can, it’s close to hearing, but it’s not hearing, and it started out very soft. For lack of a better term, it also had a very strong emotional valance. It seemed malevolent, bad, evil if you will.

This – I’ll call it a sound, for lack of a better term – it started to build an build and become more and more encompassing until it reached a fever pitch, and it was all-consuming. It reminds me of when I visited the beach as a child and I would get knocked over by a wave, and for a few seconds you get pulled under and rolled, and you don’t know if you’re going to come back up. It was like that. It was all-encompassing.

And then, like a switch, it was gone. I was lying in bed on my back. My eyes were open, and I was in a sleep paralysis state. I couldn’t move. I had an overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety. Then all of a sudden my legs raised up into the air. Mind you, I’m lying on my back; I can’t see this. It’s not in my periphery, but I distinctly remember the weight of the blankets over my legs. My legs started to shake. They started to tremor.

Inside my head, I had no control over this. It’s one thing to be in a state of paralysis where you’re trying to move and you can’t, but it’s something else to have your body move and you have no control over it. In fact, I’m actively trying to will my legs back down. I’m trying to take control of my body again and it just isn’t working. It’s like I’m a spectator in my own body with no control. My legs eventually do come down, though out of my control, and then I sit straight up in bed. Again, I’m not doing this. I’m not controlling my own body.

There’s somebody in front of me. I see someone’s back, the back of someone’s head, and my arms are wrapped around them, and I’m squeezing them very tightly. I notice that this person in front of me has a tattoo on their right shoulder. Then I notice this is the exact same tattoo as on my right shoulder. And then I realize this is me. I’m grabbing myself in front of me. And with that realization, I snap back into one, I’m forced back down into bed, and then I’ve broken free of this paralysis or this possession.

I sit back up in bed again of my own free will. I’m fully awake out of my sleep paralysis and I’m soaking wet with sweat, my sheets and cushions are soaked with sweat, with urine, and I’m recovering from this frightening and traumatic experience. My heart is racing, and I don’t ever want to go to sleep again.

JIM HAROLD: You had mentioned in your note to me about a hum. What was the role of the hum?

BLAKE: The hum was my attempt to describe that very strange phenomenon that began at the beginning, a sound or a hum. It wasn’t quite a sound, and it was originating very softly at first but then reached this fever pitch and completely took over me. It was strange because most of my sleep paralysis episodes, there’s always something on the outside that I’m interpreting as it’s coming for me because I feel this fear and anxiety. There’s something in the room, there’s something just outside the window. Often I can see it or feel it. But this was this hum or this sound that isn’t exactly a real sound. It was understood by me at the time that it was coming from inside me. It was already in me. It wasn’t in the room.

I’m not exactly sure how to interpret this. I do research and I teach biology for a living, so my scientist side is like, “This can be explained by neuroscience, this can be explained by what we know about the mechanisms of sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and so forth.” But then the other side of me – which is my science side too, because I think if you’re a good scientist, there’s always a possibility; you never discount any possibility – that, was this something that successfully took control of my body? Was it trying to extirpate me and wasn’t quite successful enough?

JIM HAROLD: That was exactly going to be my question. First of all, I admire you for being a man of science, but being able to put this side by side and say this may not all be explicable by the usual scientific explanations, leaving some room for the unknown even if that unknown is science of the future that we haven’t figured out yet. I really admire you for that. So would you almost say this one, unlike your other one, falls maybe a little bit into that supernatural category, in your thought process?

BLAKE: I’m hesitant to jump to that conclusion right away, but certainly I would say it’s unlike any other experience I’ve had with sleep paralysis. I don’t think it’s necessarily outside of the realm of possibility of a pure natural explanation. But then again, I’d say I don’t think it’s necessarily outside of the realm of a supernatural explanation. And like you said, it just may be supernatural now, but who knows what we’re going to know 100 years, 1,000 years from now? It was a surreal experience. It was terrifying. I’m in a way glad that I had that experience.

JIM HAROLD: It’s interesting because this is one I have a really hard time with in terms of categorizing as “supernatural.” People will say, “I had sleep paralysis,” and let’s face it, we know that there are physiological and biological reasons people have sleep paralysis, so I’m always hesitant – you’ll notice when we talk about this on the show, this is one that I’m hesitant to put into the supernatural column. Like if somebody says “I saw a ghost,” I’m like, “Yeah, I think that very well may be something supernatural.” Sleep paralysis I’m a little bit more careful with because we know that at times there’s definitely a physiological reason. But I also wonder if being in that state can open you up to more supernatural things.

In other words, you’re in a biologically induced state due to oxygen and different things. I know a lot of people that have sleep apnea and so forth are prone to sleep paralysis. But I’m wondering if it’s possible that being in that state could open you up possibly to some kind of supernatural interaction. Just a thought. Not saying it is, but that might be a thought.

BLAKE: Yeah, I think that’s a very interesting hypothesis, and in a sleep paralysis state, your guard is down, that’s for certain. One of the interesting things that I teach in neural science is that we have a really good understanding of action potentials and neurotransmitters and neural anatomy and how the brain is networked, but still, in those explanations of what we know, there’s nothing to suggest or to describe subjective experience. There’s nothing that we know about the science that would necessarily manifest things like our sense of self or our subjective experience of how we experience things. Those things are still a mystery, and who knows if we’ll ever have a natural explanation for them.

JIM HAROLD: Blake, I love it. I love when we have a person of science on who will say, “Hey, I’m a staunch believer in science. I teach it, I do research in it, but there’s still room for the unknown.” I love that point of view. Blake, thank you so much for joining us, for listening, for sharing your story, and for giving us a unique perspective on this sleep paralysis experience.

BLAKE: Thank you so much, Jim. It was a pleasure.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Suzanne is on the line from Rhode Island. She found out about us from Into the Fray with Shannon LeGro, so check out Shannon’s show. She has a great one. Suzanne says she has a story for us that in many ways is unlike any one that she’s heard on the Campfire, so I can’t wait to hear it. Suzanne, please tell us your story.

SUZANNE: Thank you, Jim. Like you said, I have never really heard a story anything like this before. It may seem quite odd to a lot of people because it might sound unbelievable, but I’m just telling you right now that this really happened to me.

I was engaged to be married, and I was living in Camarillo, California. I had a three-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. When my fiancé and I got together, I’d already been married once before and I really wanted to make sure that he knew what he was getting into with me because I had been experiencing a lot of strange things throughout my life. So I laid it all on the table and I said, “Listen, I have been having visitations from what I believe to be beings from another planet or another dimension, I don’t know. But I have no control over it. I just want you to know that it might keep going on, and it might involve you. So if you have a problem with that, don’t marry me.”

JIM HAROLD: Hey, I commend you. Just put it out there, put all the cards on the table makes a lot of sense.

SUZANNE: He said, “You know what, I’m totally fine with it.” I said, “Great.” I washed my hands and walked away.

So in 1989, when I was living in this house – we were engaged to be married the following year – one night we were lying in bed and he was sleeping beside me, and I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m lying in bed and I’m looking at the ceiling, and I was like, “That’s really strange. What is that?” All I could see were these really strange lights on the ceiling, like circles and triangles and squares, but they were all lit up like prisms, like if somebody had held a crystal to the window and the light was refracting onto the wall. It was like that kind of a look all over the ceiling. I was like, “Wow, what is causing that?”

I went to look at the window to see if maybe a car was driving down the street. I looked out the window. When I did, a gold disc flew across my body and landed – I’m going to say “landed” – next to me on my left-hand side. When I went to turn to look at it, I realized that I couldn’t move. All I could move were my eyes. But in my peripheral vision, I could see that this disc had manifested into a woman. I’m like, oh my God, what is happening? Before I could say anything, I was thinking this in my head because I couldn’t speak – I said, “What is this?” And she says to me telepathically, “Where I come from, marriage is the most sacred part of our existence, and I am giving you the chance to experience this if you wish.” Verbatim. I will never forget that.

Before I could think about what she was actually saying, I knew enough about the phenomenon to know that sometimes these beings manifest into things that we can understand. And I was happy for that. In my mind, I said, “I’m so glad you don’t look like what you normally look like, because if you did, I think I would freak out.” And she says to me telepathically again, “If you want to know what I look like, then look out the window.” Now mind you, I was still paralyzed, but I could still move my eyes. So when I turned to look to the right to my window, I could see a praying mantis being hanging from my windowsill.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

SUZANNE: I couldn’t even react because I was paralyzed. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. My fiancé’s still sleeping. At that moment, my doorknob started to jiggle, and when that happened, she looked at the doorknob and shot across the room and disappeared through the wall. And then my door flew open. I’m thinking, “What is going on?” When the door flew open, these three little blue beings came in and stood at the foot of my bed. They were about three and a half feet tall. They looked like little Michelin men, like little puffy cobalt blue Michelin men with round black eyes. They stood there at the end of my bed and they said, “It’s Elise. We can’t get her to stop throwing up.” Elise was my daughter.

For whatever reason in that moment, all I could think was, “Oh my God, my daughter, my daughter,” and I had this fight or flight situation where all of a sudden I could move, I could break the paralysis. I shot up out of my bed, I ran down the hallway, and when I did, I could hear her screaming and crying. She says, “Mommy, Mommy!” I come in the bedroom, and at that moment my fiancé comes running down the hall and says, “What is going on?” I looked at her and she says, “Mommy, I can’t –” and she starts throwing up all over the bed.

I was so frantically in the moment about what was going on with her to even think about what had just happened. I told my fiancé, “Run the bath,” so he turned the bath on and I grabbed her, took off her pajamas, brought her in the bathroom, held her over the toilet. Then when she was done throwing up, my fiancé put her in the bathtub and gave her a bath because it was all over her hair and everything. I went to her bedroom and changed her sheets, and we brought her back in there and I laid her back in the bed and I lay down with her and waited until she fell back to sleep. Which she did eventually. And we just went to bed like nothing happened and fell asleep.

Sorry, I just have to take my breath. In the morning, she gets up and she’s totally fine. She’s smiling. We’re in the kitchen getting ready for breakfast, and she’s sitting at the table, and I get her a bowl of cereal. My fiancé and I had this inside joke; he would say to me when we had a rough night sleeping, “Did the visitors come? Because I slept like crap.” Sometimes I would say, “I think something happened” or “No, I don’t think so,” or whatever. But this particular morning I went to the kitchen to get her cereal, and he said, “Did the visitors –” and I put my finger up to my lips and I said, “Don’t say anything.” I didn’t want my daughter to hear anything.

So I bring her cereal into the kitchen and I set it on the table, and I notice she’s drawing a picture. I look at the picture, and it’s a little round head with a little body with black round eyes, two little lines on either side of its neck, and there was a squiggly line over its head. I put the bowl down and I said, “Honey, that’s really cute. What is that?” She said, “It’s the animal from my dream last night.”

I just had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because when she said that and I looked at the shape of this little body, I thought, “Whoa, wait a minute.” But I didn’t want her to see how frightened I was, so I just kept a smile on my face and prompted her, in a jovial way, “Oh honey, that’s really sweet. So what was this little animal doing?” She says, “Mommy, they’re not really animals, but they’re not really people either.” Then my breath was taken away and I tried to keep it together. I looked at the picture some more and I said, “What did they look like?” She says, “There were three of them, and they were blue.”

I just thought, no, I can’t. This is not real. I said, “What were they doing, honey?” She says, “They were smelling me and they were telling me that they loved me.” Knowing enough about the phenomenon, knowing that a lot of stories I’ve heard with people talking about visitations that involve their children, or their children telling them stories about having a visitation, they will say things like they appeared as something else that would not frighten them, and they would say things to them as not to frighten them because they want them to trust that they’re not going to hurt them. So I really felt that that was what was happening, and I got really p***ed off, actually, at that point.

But I asked one last question. I said, “What’s that squiggly thing over its head?” She said, “Oh, it’s a cloud, Mommy. They come from the clouds.”

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

SUZANNE: I knew at that point – I actually had to excuse myself from the room because I didn’t want her to see me cry.

JIM HAROLD: Well yeah, because that’s your kid. You’re going to be very concerned for her.

SUZANNE: After everything that I had had happen to me in my lifetime, the last thing that I wanted was to have this be a part of her life, and I knew that there was nothing I could do to control it or to change it or to stop it. We never talked about it again. I never watched any UFO-related TV shows when she was growing up. I hid all of my books. I was just so afraid. I don’t know why. It was like a defense mechanism or something.

But as she got older – I never talked about my experiences to anyone until my kids were adults, for fear of many things, one of them that people would take my children away from me, that I would lose my job. Things that you would be concerned about if people think you’re insane. So I just really waited until they were older, and then I started talking about my experiences. When I did, I did ask my daughter, “Do you remember when you were three…?” She just looked at me blankly, actually, and said, “You know what, Mommy, I don’t remember anything. I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t believe in it.” I said, “Honey, I totally respect your feelings about that. I will never ask you. But just know that if you ever have any questions about anything, you can always come to me.”

JIM HAROLD: That’s got to be the toughest thing, because it’s tough if you experience something like this or have an abduction or an alien encounter situation, but when it’s your kids, you’ve got to feel somewhat powerless. If somebody bothers your kid, like a human, there are steps you can take to stop it or to fix the situation. But in this case, you’re kind of powerless.

SUZANNE: Absolutely.

JIM HAROLD: Interesting story. I’ve never heard one quite like that, indeed. I wonder if anybody else has experienced that. So your daughter now, no more problems? She has no interest in it, no belief in it, she doesn’t want to talk about it, basically?

SUZANNE: She’s going to be 37 this year, so it’s been quite a while. She has said to me, actually – I have done a couple of interviews and I have a podcast and I talk about it on that, and she says, “You know what, Mommy, you can talk about it if you want, and it’s okay if you use my name.” So at least she allows me to share my story about the situation, and she doesn’t want me to use a pseudonym in respect to her name. I was very grateful for that. And she laughs about it and she reads things that I post to her and has a little chuckle. My other daughter, on the other hand, is very open about it and has had some experiences herself and is not shy about talking about it.

JIM HAROLD: Can you give us in about 60 seconds the name of your podcast and where people can find it?

SUZANNE: My podcast is Random Alien Brain Droppings, and it’s on every platform that you might find and Apple Podcasts.

JIM HAROLD: Very good. Suzanne, thank you for being a part of the show and sharing this very personal story.

SUZANNE: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Jenny is on the line from Brisbane, Australia. We love to hear from our friends down in Australia. Jenny found out about us from that great podcast And That’s Why We Drink, the megahit. We’re always so grateful when they mention us. Jenny has a few short stories that revolve around her being what she calls “unfortunately sensitive.” Jenny is here to share these stories all the way from Australia, and we certainly appreciate it. Jenny, welcome to the program. Please tell us what happened.

JENNY: Thank you so much for having me, Jim. Yeah, I would definitely describe it as unfortunate. It’s been a bit confusing over the years, I guess, to work out whether I was just being a bit dramatic or if something was really going on on an intuitive level. So I have a few short stories for you guys today.

A bit of context: when I’m talking about intuition, it’s that really strong gut feeling, but pretty much everything goes tight. I get this desperate need to shake off the sensation, like stretch out my arms. It’s just unbelievably overwhelming. Everything in my body tells me “Get away, get moving, get rid of it.” It’s really, really strong. If it’s not that particular feeling, that super tight, constricting, feeling a bit trapped, it’s just a sinking feeling, like a gut feeling that something’s wrong and something’s off.

I’ve been getting feelings like that since I was a kid. When I go to the store, when I pick up something from the shelf, who to sit next to, any decision on any task. That’s how it all started. I still get those on occasion, but these days it’s definitely a lot more of I’ll walk into a house or I’ll meet a person and I’ll just get the feeling. There’s not really stories attached to those moments, obviously, because I just listen to it and bolt for the hills. Don’t ignore it, I guess I would give advice to people. [laughs] It’s probably there for a reason. But there’s just a couple cases that really stick out as a bit more spooky.

One big one for me was during my senor year of high school, a friend offered to drive me home from school. I didn’t have my license. I was a bit chubby, so I didn’t like walking from the bus stop. It was quite far. My grandma at the time had been really ill, so I used to go to her house every afternoon to watch classics. I don’t think I’d ever turned down a lift my entire high school life, but this one time, that feeling came over me. It was “Get on the bus. Do not get in her car.” She was so confused. She was like, “I’m just going to drive you. What’s your problem?” I just couldn’t do it. I felt like I was going to be sick there on the sidewalk in front of this bus. I was like, “No, I’ll be fine.”

I got to my grandma’s and literally within an hour she called me. She’d been in an accident. It wasn’t too severe. She was okay. But the front airbags had deployed and the passenger’s side airbag hadn’t. It pieced out later, I guess with the little details and stuff – we saw her car, and it just started clicking really slowly over time. I didn’t at first go, “Oh, thank God I missed it.” I guess I was just picking up on something from her that day. Distracted? I don’t know. But it was definitely one of those times where it didn’t occur to me until probably a couple years later why I felt like that.

But yeah, I think if I’d been in the car, it could’ve been a lot more severe. When you in retrospect look at those feelings, you do wonder, was I getting it because I was going to make a situation worse? Am I getting it because I’m just being a drama queen, like I said? I definitely get a little bit lost in why it’s happening. But that was probably one of the first ones where it led to a decision and it was super clear what the decision was, whereas beforehand I think I’d only ever gotten those feelings and just avoided the situation, never found out the outcome.

And then another time it happened, I was around 19 or 20. I was walking around my capital city attending an interview, and I was coming up on this bright red door. I’d never seen it before. Everything just locked up in my body. I felt dread. Just every bad feeling you can think of. I felt sick, uncomfortable. The best way I can describe it is my spine and arms locked up and my skin was crawling. I don’t really remember thinking “I have to move”; out of pure instinct, I bolted across a heavy street on sight of this door, which had never happened to me before.

I was trying to breathe through the panic. I was standing on the side of the street. It’s our capital city here. Hyperventilating, looking like a very hysterical young woman. [laughs] I tried to breathe through it, and I couldn’t take my eyes off this thing. It was a big old heritage-listed building. The door was just firetruck red. As I was calming down and breathing through it and wondering what the hell was going on with me, I was watching people and they were giving it this natural wide berth. The whole time I was watching, no one crossed the threshold of this door. They gave it this really – it’s like a forcefield. They went around and walked past.

This door has lived rent-free in my head for I think about a decade now. I remember about a year later, I was so annoyed with myself for being so scared by a building that I went back. Now, our cities are not American size cities. [laughs] There’s a lot less people here. I grew up here, so it is not hard to find a street. And for the life of me, I could not find this door anywhere. I searched every other street. I looked at the shapes of the buildings to see if there was anything similar. I couldn’t find it again. It got very glitch-in-the-Matrix-y. It was broad daylight when it happened. A lady stopped to ask if I was okay, so I know I wasn’t walking and dreaming at the same time.

But the feeling of absolute dread, like the worst of the worst was behind that door, has stayed with me for 10 years. I’ve never forgotten. It’s definitely the worst feeling I’ve ever gotten. Everything in my body was like, “Something bad is coming right up on this street if you keep walking. Run away.” So that’s probably the strongest one I’ve ever had. But yeah, I’m still annoyed about it, still confused about it. That one really got my curiosity, and I’ve never been able to find out why.

JIM HAROLD: You don’t know why. But in the first case, I will say this, and then you can tell us the last one. In the first case, with the car accident, that seemed like actually that was fortunate, right?

JENNY: It was, yes. I have had – they’re not really story worthy, but a few other ones where I’ve felt like I shouldn’t be standing somewhere and I’ve moved and then something’s fallen down off of a shelf. Things like that where I look back on it and I’m like, that was oddly lucky.

JIM HAROLD: Now this last one. You have a last one for us, right?

JENNY: I do. It’s a little bit sad, so I’m sorry in advance. It is a good story in hindsight, but it was definitely very hard to go through at the time. It was about a year ago. I work in construction coordination. In the head office, the HR team will bring through any new hires to meet the rest of the team. So she brought around a new building supervisor. He was really nice, he was really lovely. Introduced himself. Nothing odd.

When I stood up to shake his hand, I got so sad. I think I teared up. It was really odd. Honestly, I thought I was hormonal. It really swept me off my feet, like instant emotion. And then I got that awful sinking feeling in my stomach, just felt so sick. When he left the office to go meet other people, I was in a bad mood all day. Just cranky, upset, confused. I honestly thought hormones hit me like a freight train. [laughs]

I guess it was a couple hours later my boss came down, and we asked him, “Did you meet the new guy?” He said, “Yeah, I met him. I don’t know if I can come to work after everything that happened to him.” Of course we wanted to know, so we were like, “What happened to him?” It was actually his first day back at work, new job, new city, after his family had passed away in a car accident.

The more I got to know him – again, in hindsight, in retrospect, I know all of this now. I certainly didn’t at the time and didn’t put the pieces together, but he did end up telling me that that day at the office when I met him was quite literally one of the other worst days of his life because he just wasn’t ready. He was not ready to go back to work. He put on a fake smile for everybody. I know him very well now; he’s probably one of my closest work buddies. But yeah, at the time he said it was an awful, awful day. He didn’t want to be there. He wasn’t ready to go back into work. It’d only been a couple months.

I have never been that completely blindsided by someone else’s emotion. I’ve always been a bit empathetic, definitely take them on, but this hit me like a literal tidal wave, and it affected me for a good 24 hours of just nothing made me happy. Anyone could’ve tried, but nothing penetrated it, and then it just naturally went away. It wasn’t until probably a couple months ago that I really sat down and thought about it properly, and I realized I think I sponged some of that up, which was really strange.

Thus far, the gut feeling has never once lied.

JIM HAROLD: We’ve had quite a few calls recently of similar type things where people interpret things or get this feeling and then it’s off of other people, or they get a premonition or things. We’ve had a lot of calls like that recently. I absolutely believe it is a real thing, and it’s certainly worldwide. Jenny, thank you so much for calling us today from Australia. We certainly appreciate it.

JENNY: No problem. Thank you so much for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Suzanne from Texas. She is a new listener, and she’s going to talk to us about an experience that happened when she was a new nurse. We’re so glad to have her with us. Suzanne, Thank you for joining us, and thank you for your work as a nurse, because really, truly, I believe that nurses do God’s work. It’s a tremendous profession, and we’re grateful to all of our nurses out there. So Suzanne, tell us what happened.

SUZANNE: It happened when I was a fairly new nurse, about 18 years ago, I want to say. I was doing a home health job with a patient who had pretty extensive injuries – enough to where it would psychologically be heavy on your heart. So he had to deal with these issues, and it affects how you interact with people and the environment. But he was open-minded to letting me sage the house, try to get rid of any negative energy that was there.

So I was saging his home, and I was in his bedroom, and then as I was saging his bedroom, I turned around and I saw – it was the size of a basketball, three, suspended in air. Two in the front, one in the back middle, like what a triangle would be. It had a white color to it. It’s a white color I’ve never seen before. But usually when I think of seeing something paranormal, I get frightened. People get frightened. You don’t know and you get nervous and scared. I had an utter sense of peace. I was not fearful at all, which I was cognizant of when I saw that.

Then all of a sudden as I saw that – I want to say it’s almost like it was communicating with me. It was my voice, but it was thoughts coming into my mind. All it said to me was, “Are you ready?” I immediately said, “Yes,” and then I stopped and I thought of my son. Because at that time he was maybe two. And I said, “No, I can’t leave my son.”

JIM HAROLD: So when they said “Are you ready?”, do you think they meant were you ready to die and go to the next spiritual plane kind of thing?

SUZANNE: At that moment, when I thought of my son, that’s when I thought that’s what it meant. And if that’s the case, it must be pretty peaceful at the end, because I was ready. Nothing bothered me. I was ready. But then my son popped in and I said, “No, I can’t. I can’t do that to my son.” Then at that moment I turned around, and – it’s very hard to describe. I felt like I looked up and everything around me – it wasn’t moving, the room was not moving, but I could feel something was changing around me.

Then all of a sudden I stopped and I was cognizant of that, and then I went and looked back and those orb features or whatever they were were still there. Then I turned around to walk away and I looked back again and they were still there. Then as I went toward it, all of a sudden I looked back again and it was gone. And at that moment I realized something had happened and I wasn’t sure what it was. So I ran out into the living room, and there was a boy there. As I’m talking about what just happened, the boy ran into a room, and apparently he told his mother when that was all occurring that he had seen a white light shoot across the living room.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

SUZANNE: But at that point in my life, I was heading on a path that wasn’t my life calling, so I think what was happening – after that occurrence happened, I had a lot of bad things happen to me, very negative, that any person would be like “Why is all this stuff happening to me?” To the point where I said, “You know what? I can’t do this anymore,” and I picked up and I moved and I left three weeks after this occurrence.

And I tell you, not three weeks after that, I was staying with my brother, and his neighbor, which was his friend, said, “Hey, I want to introduce you to my brother.” I met her brother; a year later we were engaged. A year after that we were married. A year after that we had our first son. And we’ve been married now going on almost 20 years. So I think that what it really was is that I was not on the path I was supposed to be on, and I had to make different decisions. Even though it had negative things that caused me to make these choices to go on the right path, these horrible moments in my life changed everything and made my life in the right path. It improved it.

JIM HAROLD: So do you think the question “Are you ready?” – was that actually not about dying, but it’s “Are you ready for this new phase of your life?”

SUZANNE: Yeah, I think that if I would’ve kept going on the route I was going on, I don’t think I would be living my purpose. I think whatever it was was aware that I wasn’t making the choices I was supposed to be making in my life, so that happened.

JIM HAROLD: And if you hadn’t seen those orbs, do you think you would’ve made those changes?

SUZANNE: I never thought about that. No, I don’t think I would have because it was forced upon me. I had to pick myself or the people around me or these negative situations that I think long term could’ve been very problematic. Toxic relationships and things like that that can be detrimental for people. So it forced me to make the choices that were going to be the best for me and my family.

JIM HAROLD: There you have it. Very interesting indeed. Suzanne, thank you for sharing your story on the Campfire, and thank you for your work as a nurse, because I know you said you still continue to work as a nurse. Really, that is one of those jobs that really makes such a difference in people’s lives. Thanks again for being part of the Campfire today.

SUZANNE: Appreciate that. Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Thank you so much for joining us this week on the Campfire. Again, if you are in the Canton, Ohio, area or within driving distance, this weekend, June 2nd and 3rd, I will be a part of their Monster Fest. You can get your tickets and more information at smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest. That’s smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest. As I understand it, there will also be tickets available at the door, so I hope to see you there if you are in the area.

As we mentioned, our tour, totally separate from Monster Fest – has nothing to do with it – has been cancelled. But those of you who purchased tickets will be refunded promptly, and I thank you for your support. We will go upward and onward and keep putting the shows out for you, the Campfire show. That’s what people love and we’re going to keep on keepin’ on.

And if you do want to help us, I’m going to tell you something that doesn’t cost you a penny. Please make sure that you follow or subscribe in the podcast app of your choice, number one. Number two, please tell a friend today. That’s how we spread the word. We’re not a huge conglomerate; we don’t have a big huge radio company behind us. But what we do have is you, and I think that’s so much more important, and so much more fun. So please tell your friends.

And then finally, a rating and review would be nice. I’ve heard the podcast gurus say “Oh, those don’t count. Those don’t mean anting.” But I disagree, because there’s a lot of podcasts out there, folks, and people can look and see that we’ve got a 4.8, a 4.9, a 5.0 rating, and they can say, “Wow, this is one I should check out.” And I feel confident – if you love spooky stories, once you listen to Campfire, you’re going to be hooked. But the point is getting people to listen to start with. That’s the tough part, especially these days. So, please help us out. I would appreciate it.

Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe and, of course, stay spooky. Bye-bye.

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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