A battlefield ghost, a haunted hotel room and much more spookiness on this edition on this week’s Campfire!
TRANSCRIPT
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. If you are new here, what it’s all about are real stories of the paranormal, the supernatural, the strange. Could be UFOs, could be ghosts, could be cryptid creatures, but whatever the stories are, they are real, they are true, from everyday folks just like you who have experienced something very strange. Welcome to the show.
If you enjoy what we do, please make sure that you tell a friend today. Maybe even text them a link to this very episode. Your reward? Great stories – like this one.
Next up on the Campfire is Edwin from North Carolina, and we are so glad to speak with him once again. He’s been on in the past talking about living in a haunted house, and he’s going to take us back to his days in the Marine Corps and tell us about some inexplicable moments. He’s going to tell us about that right now. Edwin, welcome back to the show. Thank you for your service to the country, and please tell us what happened.
EDWIN: Hey, Jim. Thanks so much. I joined the Marine Corps in 1999, and I was 17. I was well aware of the paranormal, like I had called in the past about growing up in a haunted house, but I thought exiting from that house, there would be different things but that I wouldn’t feel the certain things that I felt in that home. But unfortunately, in my 10-year career in the Marine Corps, there were a couple things that happened to me that definitely were – I just couldn’t figure them out.
The first one that I wanted to talk to you about was when I was a recruit at Paris Island. At Paris Island, when you’re a recruit, you live in these long buildings called squad bays, and they’re usually three floors high. One evening, we were standing guard duty. They usually did it for an hour, where you wouldn’t sleep, you would stand guard, check over the other recruits. As I was standing there – there’s an open area at one end of the squad bay that has an open area, the restrooms, and where the drill instructor sleeps. Most of the time we would stand there and wait for our duty to end. At the far end, there’s a door that exits out of the building.
So we’re standing there, me and another gentleman who was on duty, and we’re whispering to each other because all the other recruits are sleeping. We hear the door at the far end open. And when I say far end, it’s about I’d say 30 meters. It’s a long squad bay. We look and we see the door open, and we don’t see anybody come in. Then it closes, and me and him just look at each other like, “Oh.” But then when we look back, we can see a darker-than-dark shape standing at the far end.
JIM HAROLD: Ooh.
EDWIN: The one thing that you say when you’re on duty, you say, “Halt! Who goes there?” So we said, “Halt! Who goes there?”, kind of quietly, not to disturb the other recruits from sleeping. No answer. The recruit that I was with walks up maybe about 10 feet and he just stops. I can hear it in his voice, he’s scared. He’s like, “Halt! Who goes there?”
In ’99 – I don’t know what they have now, but we had these flashlights that were kind of L-shaped, and they’re green. You had these red lenses on them so you don’t disturb people sleeping. I hit my red lens twice, and it hits its red lens twice, and then he looks back at me and I look back at him, and when we look back, the door is opening, and it closes.
We beat feet. We run right to the door because we didn’t know who this was, and we didn’t want to get in trouble by the drill instructors, having somebody just walk into our squad bay. So we run. What I didn’t mention was that – we run, and this is a matter of two, three seconds. We get there, open the door, and we look down the steps, because we’re on the third floor, and there’s no one there. There’s no one on the steps. You can see directly right down the steps. My guy runs down the steps, doesn’t see anybody. We look out into the outside area, there’s nobody there.
He comes running up and he’s like, “What did we just see?” I was like, “I don’t know, man. Let’s just go back.” We go back and we knock on the drill instructor’s door and we frantically tell him, “There was somebody or something.” He goes, “Ah, don’t worry about it. That thing visits two or three times a month.”
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] “Don’t worry about it.”
EDWIN: Yeah, “Don’t worry about it. That thing visits two or three times a month. We don’t know what it is.” We still don’t know what it is. Being that I had grown up in a home that was haunted, I figured it was a spirit or something. Those squad bays are super old. They go all the way back to World War II, so there’s definitely something there, some type of history.
The second one – and this is the experience that reignited the paranormal with me because between that time and this time, so between ’99 and 2008, there’s so many things that are going on that you don’t really have time to focus on some of the things. And even if you do see things that are strange and unexplained, you just wish it away or you say, “I don’t know what that is. I don’t care.”
But in ’08, I was stationed out in Fallujah, Iraq, and I went to the showers. They had these shower – I guess you can call them – they were like these Quonset huts that had showers. They were the only place where you can get a nice hot shower after going out on the wire and coming back. So we went. This one creeps me out still, and it gets me a little nervous when I think about it. This one I can’t explain because I don’t know really what it is.
I went into the shower room, and there were four other Marines in there and they’re showering. We’re jaw-jacking and talking, and all of a sudden we hear gunfire. Immediately, we all run, get shorts on, and we run out with our M4s, literally bare-chested with shorts on, running out because we don’t know what we’re getting into, but we know we’re going to get into it. We come out the far end of the Quonset hut to see what’s going on, and Jim, we see a Navy Corpsman and we see a Marine. He’s holding a Marine, and the Marine is bleeding out.
We go into crazy mode. We’re like, “What is going on?” We go to run, and the Corpsman looks up at us and throws his right hand out to us and then shimmers and disappears. The Corpsman and the Marine that’s bleeding out.
JIM HAROLD: Oh man.
EDWIN: When I say shimmer, it was like – I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know how to equate what this looked like, but it just disappeared into the ether. It was unbelievable. So then I look at the other guys that are with me, and at the same time, there was another hut that had showers that was on the other side of this open area, and they come running out and they say they hear gunshots. But we’re already standing out there. We look at these guys – there was about six or seven of them from the other showers – and we just look at each other like, “What the heck is going on?” I was like, “Nothing’s going on.”
Me and these other guys turn around, and I say, “What the hell did I just see, man?” And this guy’s like, “Did you see somebody? Did you see a bleeding guy and a Corpsman?” I said, “I saw a bleeding guy and a Corpsman.” Then the other guy was like, “Did it just disappear?” We just couldn’t figure it out. We went in. Because this is Iraq, we can’t focus on that.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, you’ve got to save yourself and do your job.
EDWIN: I mean, we’re on base and we’re safe because we’re behind the gates or whatever, but you kind of say, “Okay, I don’t know what that was.” It sat with me for months, and then finally when I got back home to San Diego, I thought about it again. One night I was talking and then I said, “Oh yeah, this thing happened.” I reconfirmed. I called one of the guys who I knew – he was from a different unit, but I knew him. I called him and I said, “We definitely saw that, right?” He was like, “Dude, I can’t get it out of my brain. I don’t know what we saw.”
We discussed about it, and he had the idea that we saw a ghost. For some reason, at that time I just thought – and I had thought about it. Where I lived, I had noticed that sometimes these things didn’t interact with me; they just seemed to be this video of something that happened in time. I think that’s what it was. I think this just happened sometime in the past, and it just replays once in a while. It sits with me a lot because it was like it was there. And I’ve seen that type of scene in my life, being in the military, and it was there. And we were ready to respond. We were ready to run over there and help this Corpsman out with our bleeding brother of ours. But before we could even take one step, it just totally shimmered and disappeared.
JIM HAROLD: So you think you saw a replay, basically.
EDWIN: Totally think that, yeah.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
EDWIN: It happens occasionally throughout – because when you’re in the miliary, sometimes you’re in places that there have been so many people and so many souls that have run through that same place. Sometimes you’ll hear voices in places where you’re not supposed to hear them, and you hear – you say to yourself, “I’m crazy. I just heard that.” But the more and more that you realize it, that there’s these moments where people are in these places, whether it’s trauma or happiness – there’s a lot of emotion attached to these places, and I think that’s what really causes these situations to happen.
JIM HAROLD: It just is amazing to me. Again, it goes back to – and I sound like the proverbial broken record – that reality is way stranger. I just read a book called Dark Matter. It’s a fictional book, it’s a novel, but it plays into some of these things. This idea that there might be more than one version of us, or the idea of the multiverse. Hope I didn’t give away too many spoilers there, but check it out. It’s a great book, everybody. But the point is that it really is a very, very, very interesting thought.
I don’t know the answers, Edwin, but I do believe we live in a far stranger reality than we realize. Or maybe it’s something as simple as some kind of energy imprint, because obviously, life and death, the energy is so strong and so emotionally charged. Maybe that’s part of the answer. Who knows, who knows. But thank you so much for sharing this very amazing – well, both amazing stories, and for your service to the country. And thank you for being a part of the Campfire tonight.
EDWIN: I appreciate that, Jim. Thanks so much.
JIM HAROLD: Karen is on the line from Wisconsin. A repeat caller. We’re glad to have her back. I told her I’m so glad when somebody calls back; that means I did not scare them off. And Karen has a few stories for us today, including some workplace experiences. So Karen, welcome back to the show, thank you for joining us again, and tell us what happened.
KAREN: Thank you, Jim. I’ve worked in the senior care industry for about 10 years now, and every place that I’ve worked, there’s been spooky stories that staff members have told me, coworkers that I’ve worked with. I believe there’s a lot more believers in our industry than skeptics, which is kind of cool, too. We are always sharing stories. So I wanted to have a few short stories to share with you today.
I wanted to start with my current job. I run the activities program at an assisted living and memory care. I’ve only been here for about a year, but I’ve heard a lot of stories from people and I’ve experienced a couple things. One of my old coworkers who works overnight told me about how a lot of residents reported to him shadow figures that they would see at night. They didn’t really discuss it amongst themselves; it was just to him. I don’t know if they know what shadow people are or anything like that, but the way they described it sounded like that. He also saw an apron that was on a hook in the kitchen lift off of the hook, go over a little bit and fall to the floor.
JIM HAROLD: Oh man, it lifted itself like somebody – like an invisible person.
KAREN: Like somebody pulled it up, yep.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
KAREN: He also saw a full garbage bag that was on its side on the floor suddenly stand up by itself, too. So he’s seen a lot overnight. I haven’t seen as much stuff as he has, probably because I work during the day.
Another thing is the hallways at my work are lined with these beautiful historic photographs that are printed on canvas. They’re all local photos from the Historical Society, I think. It’s a really neat thing. But they sometimes fly off the walls.
JIM HAROLD: Yikes.
KAREN: Yeah, I’ve seen that happen once. There’s a photograph right next to my office, on the outside of my office, that I have seen during an activity fly off the wall when there was nobody there, and then I’ve heard it fly off a couple times, too. That particular one is of a train that’s on its side on the train tracks, like a trainwreck, but it was from the early 1900s, it looks like. There’s a man in the front that’s just staring at the camera. It’s kind of creepy-looking. This old coworker of mine said that sometimes he would try to hang up a picture and it would fly right back off, too.
JIM HAROLD: You can’t see it, folks, but Karen is on video, and behind her is a clock on the wall, so I’m watching it closely to see if it falls off. [laughs]
KAREN: Yes, because I am at work right now. I’m on my lunch break. [laughs] So yeah, those were some of the weird poltergeist things, I guess, that have happened here.
Also, there’s a corner in this building that’s not too far from where I’m sitting in my office that is rumored to have the most activity here. There’s two rooms in particular. One of them, there’s been like four people in a row that have lived there that were in good health and then they suddenly declined. I mean, they’re elderly people, so I guess that’s not super crazy, but the last one that lived there told me very matter-of-factly that her room is haunted. I was like, “What?” [laughs] My ears perked up. She said that she was hearing knocking on the wall at night when there was nothing on the other side of the wall. She would hear it in her closet area and on the wall that on the other side is just a library.
The other room that’s right next to that one, there was a resident that kept asking if there was a breakroom on the other side of it because she would hear talking at night. My old coworker that I referenced before that was working overnight, I just asked him yesterday to make sure that there was not actually people on the other side of the wall. But he said, “No, it was just me and one other person working.” Every time that she would ask that, she would end up falling and getting bruised. It was kind of weird. And then she eventually switched rooms. She’s still here with us and everything, and she’s never had an issue since she switched rooms.
And then almost a year ago, someone else moved into that particular room, and it took a little bit for her to get acclimated, but she used to be a nurse, and she didn’t get fazed very easily. But one day she came up to me and she said that she saw a shadowy man in her bathroom, and she was really scared. And I was like, “What?” It was happening every single day for a week and she was not sleeping, she was super stressed out about it. Without knowing a ton about it, I decided to take my protection crystals and put them under her bed, and then I yelled in the bathroom, “Stay away from her!” as loud as I could.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
KAREN: And she’s never had that problem since. I actually even asked her today – she still doesn’t know that I did this, but I asked her today if she’s had trouble with that, and she said no.
Lastly, I wanted to share a story from a previous job of mine, which still kind of gives me the chills when I think about it. I used to work in a different assisted living. The building’s in the shape of an “L.” There was a gentleman that lived at the end of the hall, at the top of the “L,” and he was in a lot of pain and he would yell out a lot, unfortunately. He would yell, “Help me! Help me!” and then he would yell the name “Sarah” a lot because that was his favorite caregiver there.
He passed away, and the next day we had lunch in the dining room, which was at the middle of the “L.” All the residents were in the dining room and I was in the kitchen with two other coworkers, and at the same time, all three of us heard, “Help me! Sarah!” at the end of the hall.
JIM HAROLD: Oh man.
KAREN: Yeah. I ran down the hall because I was like “What the heck?” All of us stopped and stared at each other like, “Did you hear that?”, and we all did. I ran down the hall. There was nobody in the entire hallway at all. That one still gives me chills just to think about. I guess he wasn’t done with his time there at that point in time. I think sometimes there’s a lot of lingering things in assisted living facilities or any other senior care buildings.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I love how you say not a lot of skeptics once people work in these places for a while. Very interesting.
KAREN: Yeah, for sure. And if I ever bring up a ghost story, there’s always somebody who’s like, “Oh, let me tell you about this!”
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I’m not a bit surprised, from things I’ve heard from other folks. Karen, thank you for sharing this. And it’s really great because you get the view from somebody on the inside of a place, somebody who really works in the industry and understands. That’s great work that you’re doing, and people who work and help our seniors, I think that’s so, so important, because our seniors have been there for us; I think we have to be there for our seniors. It won’t be that long until I’m in that category. [laughs] So I feel like – well, it’ll be a little while, but…
KAREN: Well, come on over here. I’ll take care of you. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: There you go. About 15 years, and I’ll see. All right, thanks so much, Karen. You take it easy, and thank you for being a part of the Campfire.
KAREN: Thank you, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Policy Genius. If you have a family like I do, you know how much your loved ones depend on you. In a worst case scenario, you wouldn’t want them to worry about money. And that’s where a good life insurance plan can give you peace of mind; if something happens to your family, we’ll have a safety net to cover mortgage payments, college costs, or other expenses, so they can get back on their feet and focus on what’s most important.
You may say, “Jim, I’m covered. I’ve got coverage through my work.” And I think that’s a great thing, don’t get me wrong. But employer-sponsored health insurance may not offer enough protection for your family’s needs, and it won’t follow you if you leave your job. So right now is a great time to take the lead and future-proof your family’s finances by getting life insurance – and Policy Genius gives you a smarter way to find and buy it.
Boy, I’ll tell ya, when I first started out, Dar and I, I insisted on life insurance. Unfortunately, this was quite a few years go – there was no Policy Genius, and boy, I wish there was because it would’ve been so much easier and so much more affordable. Policy Genius was built to modernize the life insurance industry. Their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from America’s top insurers in just a few clicks to find your lowest price. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $39 per month for $2 million of coverage. Some options offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams.
And here’s the cool thing; Policy Genius, they have licensed agents who can help you find the best fit for your needs – but they work for you, not the insurance companies. That means they don’t have any incentive whatsoever to recommend one insurer over another, so you know you can trust their guidance. And that’s just one of the reasons they have thousands of 5-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot – not to mention there are no added fees, and your personal details are private.
Your loved ones deserve a financial safety net. You deserve a smarter way to find and buy it. Go to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That’s policygenius.com, and we thank Policy Genius for their support of Jim Harold’s Campfire.
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: Oh, we have another podcasting guest – actually, two podcasting guests. I love when we’re getting these great stories from podcasters all around the internet. Tonight we’re going to talk to Patrick and Rebecca from Ghostly. I recently had the privilege to be on their show. That was a lot of fun. They have a story that they’re going to share with us, and then afterward, they’re going to tell us a little bit about Ghostly. Patrick, Rebecca, good to have you around the Campfire. Please tell us what happened.
PATRICK: Thank you, Jim. I’ll start it off. There’s a place in the Chicagoland area called Bachelor’s Grove. It is supposedly one of the most haunted cemeteries in the United States. We were going to interview a guy named Karl, with a “K,” and Wendy. They own a website where they talk about Bachelor’s Grove. We were really excited to talk to them. It was a November day in Chicago, but it was like 60 degrees out. I would say it was pretty warm. We got there, and we brought Rebecca’s brother along. He was going to be doing video for us.
As soon as we got there, he ran off into the woods saying that he needed to check out the woods. There’s woods connected to it. We thought it would be a couple minute thing. We didn’t think he was going to be gone for long. We went and we started talking to Wendy and Karl. I would say it was about an hour.
REBECCA: Yeah, I was going to say, my brother is a very rational guy. I think he does have some believer in him, but it was very odd because when we got there – again, he was supposed to videotape us talking to these people, and he just said, “I need to go see what’s in the woods.” The thing is, we had actually been there before, and if you’ve been to this place, the actual cemetery is very small. Maybe, I don’t even know, 50 graves or something. It’s very small. But it’s surrounded by “woods.” They are very thick and very difficult to get through, and we had told him –
PATRICK: But very short, though.
REBECCA: And small, yeah. You could walk from one end of this “wood” to the other in – I’m going to give 15 minutes only because it’s a lot of thicket. So he was like, “I’m just going to go explore.” He felt compelled to go. I was at the point where I was starting to get worried for his safety because, again, there’s no reason he should be out there for an hour.
So we were just about to try to go into the woods, which – we’d only been in the woods before with a guide. It was kind of scary. [laughs] But anyways, finally he came back, and it was like, “Where have you been?” In his mind, he had only been gone a few minutes. If you ask him now, he does not have any memory of what happened.
PATRICK: But he did take video of it, and in the video it’s very Blair Witch-ish. He was in the middle of the woods and he was scared. He didn’t know how to get out. This is a man that grew up in the outdoors, too. He’s an outdoorsman.
REBECCA: Oh yeah. Very good sense of direction. But there would be times where he was like, “Wait, wasn’t I just here? Didn’t I just see this?” It’s these short video clips. It’s really disturbing to watch, I will say. I always say I never have anything paranormal happen to me, but that felt really scary because I didn’t know where he was and he doesn’t really know where he was during that time.
JIM HAROLD: You know what it reminds me of – and you’re going to laugh, but this reminds me of the Bermuda Triangle.
PATRICK: It kind of is, yeah. This particular cemetery is known for this, too.
REBECCA: Yes. We didn’t know this at the time.
PATRICK: No, we didn’t.
REBECCA: But after this, they said, “This has happened before.”
PATRICK: He did eventually come back and he was very frazzled, and we started packing up all of our stuff. We were about to head out, and as soon as we got to the cemetery gates, there was a puddle of water. As I said, it was 60 degrees out, and this puddle of water froze up as soon as her brother passed by it. I witnessed it freezing up. Now, I am a skeptic, and I am witnessing this freeze up and witnessing how much he’s freaking out for being lost in the woods for an hour. It was just an incredible experience because these woods kind of call you back, actually. Ever since being there, I’ve wanted to go back. Whenever I have an off day at work, I’m always planning an adventure there, but I’ve never gone back since then.
REBECCA: Yeah. It is the kind of place you have to tell yourself, “Okay” – there are people that will go there and picnic there.
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] That doesn’t sound like someplace I would want to go picnic.
REBECCA: We had gone there one time before that, and when we got there, we met these people and they were having a picnic.
PATRICK: They were barbequing, yeah.
REBECCA: They were barbequing at the cemetery. Again, it’s an odd place.
PATRICK: When we say a cemetery, too, it is an old cemetery that does not have road access. You actually have to park out and walk in the woods halfway in order to get there.
REBECCA: You have to know where it is.
PATRICK: You have to know the path.
JIM HAROLD: Yikes.
REBECCA: And I will say – again, Pat, being the skeptic, does not normally believe these things. He would probably say it’s a microclimate. [laughs] Normally he would. But in this case, it really did freak you out a little bit to see that.
PATRICK: Yeah, that was probably one of the most bizarre things that has ever happened. I’ve never witnessed water freezing up in front of me when somebody walks by in 60-degree weather.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s – see, I told you. When I was on Patrick and Rebecca’s show, I said there’s always something new with stories. Right there, something we’ve never heard on the Campfire. Patrick, I will ask you – and by the way, I will say Patrick is a very kind skeptic. He’s a little more on the skeptical side, but he’s very reasonable about it and is great about having serious, interesting conversations, so I enjoyed my time with Patrick and Rebecca on their show. But Patrick, what is your theory? Or do you have one?
PATRICK: I would like to say, as Rebecca was saying, some kind of weird microclimate, like just this one area is just really cold. I did feel a little bit of cold, so it wasn’t like it’s impossible, but it just doesn’t feel right. That explanation just doesn’t feel right for the story. Usually when I’m onto something with the skeptic side, I can feel it. It feels like, “Okay, this is going in the right direction. This makes logical sense.” It doesn’t make logical sense. Jim, I’m sorry; I have no plausible reason for why this would happen.
REBECCA: But he still doesn’t believe in ghosts.
JIM HAROLD: That’s okay, that’s okay. All are welcome around the Campfire. Even skeptics. And I’ve got to be honest – some of my favorite calls are when we get people who say, “You know, Jim, I’ve never had anything happen to me. Heck, I don’t even believe in this stuff. But there was this one time…” I understand you have more stories, but that is a definite one time.
But something you should listen to for more than one time – how do you like that segue? – is Ghostly, Patrick and Rebecca’s podcast. Can you tell the folks a little bit about it and how they can find it and so forth?
REBECCA: Absolutely. Thanks, Jim. We are The Ghostly Podcast, and we are a believer and a skeptic who take a ghost legend – so something that happened; we usually talk about the history and the place or the person or the story, and then I share the ghost stories, the ghost sightings that have happened with that, and we debate if it’s true. And I promise we don’t fight. We do generally debate, and in fact, it is not our job; we are just simply the people presenting the two sides, and you, the listener, then get to go on our website and vote whether or not you believe that it’s true. So you can go to our websites, ghostlypodcast.com, or find us, of course, on any of your podcast players out there. We’re on all of them.
PATRICK: And we’re starting to do YouTube videos now. We just started two episodes ago. It’s been really exciting.
REBECCA: And you can also join our Patreon, where we do more of an interview focus where we talk to local ghost hunters and, I don’t know, people that are in the paranormal world. We have a lot of fun.
JIM HAROLD: Very cool. The name of the podcast is Ghostly, and I’m sure you can find that on all the major podcast apps. Give us the name of that website one more time, if you would.
PATRICK: It’s ghostlypodcast.com.
JIM HAROLD: Excellent. Check it out, everybody! Patrick and Rebecca, thanks for being on the Campfire, and stay spooky.
PATRICK: Thank you, Jim, and thank you for all that you do.
REBECCA: Thanks.
JIM HAROLD: Danielle is on the line from Atlanta, Georgia, and we’re so glad to have her on. She found out about us from Scott and Forrest over at Astonishing Legends. So many people find out about us that way, so I really appreciate them, and I appreciate Danielle. She’s going to take us back to a Thanksgiving a few years ago and the strangeness that ensued. Danielle, welcome to the show today. Thank you for listening, and tell us what happened on this strange Thanksgiving.
DANIELLE: Thank you, Jim. It was 2018. Like you said, it was over Thanksgiving. Me and my husband usually take a trip over that long weekend. We decided to go to Charleston this time. Neither one of us had ever been. It was really exciting. We decided to stay in this apartment/condo deal that was an old renovated hotel. Super old hotel.
When we walked in, nothing was really creepy about it at all. It was really beautiful. The thing about it, though, that they told us originally was that there was going to be no housekeeping at all. There was like an emergency key, but we were the only ones that had a real key to get into the room.
That being said, we walk in, we have our night. I fell asleep pretty early. My husband fell asleep watching TV. He woke up in the middle of the night, around two or three o’clock, and he saw that this door, which was kind of a balcony door – but there was no balcony; you couldn’t walk out. It was just to open up to look onto this courtyard. The door was wide open. He didn’t remember leaving it open. It was also over Thanksgiving, so it was really cold outside, so the whole room was freezing. He just shook it off, closed the door, made sure that it was locked.
We woke up that next morning and the door was open again. Didn’t make any sense because, again, he had made sure that the door had been locked, and it was wide open again. Like, wide open, and the room was freezing cold. He told me that he had woken up in the middle of the night and that the door had been open then and he had made sure to lock the door. So we kind of fiddled with the door, trying to see if maybe for some reason it had blown open, even though we were facing a courtyard that was closed, so there wouldn’t have been any wind to blow open the door anyway.
It was kind of creepy, but we figured it was a newly renovated hotel but it was also old, like an old building, so maybe something had happened. We couldn’t really figure it out. We wanted to go out on our day, which was going to be this long walking tour of the city, so we closed the door, and there was a safety latch above the door that you could push down. Like they have in some hotels. You push it down. It’s like a piece of metal and it keeps the door from opening. It’s just another safety feature. So we made sure that that was shut.
I watched my husband do this. We walk out of the hotel and we go about our day on this walk. That was Black Friday, so we were doing some shopping and stuff as well. We did the whole walk; it took the whole day. We had a bunch of bags, and we walked into this restaurant that we were going to go and eat at that was only about three, maybe four blocks away from the place we were staying. I said, “I’m going to go drop off the bags in the hotel so that we won’t be lugging them around for the rest of the night,” because we had a ghost tour to go on that night too.
I get the bags, walk the four blocks, and I remember distinctly getting into the elevator, which was this really old, very slow elevator, and I’m sitting there, and as it’s going up, I’m getting a creepier and creepier feeling. I just knew instinctively that something was going to happen, and I said to myself, “If I walk in that room and the door is open, I’m going to freak out.” I put my key in the door, open up the door, and what do you know – the door is wide open. It’s freezing cold in this room.
I was so scared. It was this complete numbness in my body. I basically threw everything on the ground, ran over to the balcony door, shut it, put the latch down again, and then ran back out of the hotel. The elevator ride down was the longest ride. [laughs] I was so scared. I basically ran back to this restaurant.
As I’m walking in, I must’ve been white as a ghost – no pun intended. But I must’ve just been super flushed because my husband looked at me and he was like, “What just happened?” I asked him, basically accused him of messing with me, because I thought that somehow – I had to rationalize what had just happened, and I thought maybe he had somehow gone back to the room and opened up the door. But the more I thought about it, I had been with him the whole day. There was no time in between that he could’ve done that.
And there was no one coming in and out of that room. That was the thing that was messing with me the most. There was no housekeeping. There was no one else with a key. There was no reason for anyone to go in that room. And we had put down the latch on the door. Nothing could’ve blown that door open.
We didn’t go back until really late that night. We went on the ghost tour, we had the whole thing. I was really spooked out about the whole thing. We walked into the hotel when we got back, and nothing. The door wasn’t open. Nothing felt strange anymore. I was scared to walk in, but when we walked in, it felt fine. It felt like when we’d walked in initially. We had the whole rest of the trip, too. That was the thing. You know what they talk about, actually – I heard it on Astonishing Legends before. They call it “paranormal apathy.”
JIM HAROLD: Right.
DANIELLE: It’s like something will happen, you’ll have sleep paralysis or something like that, and then just go to bed afterward. It kind of felt like something like that, where I just became kind of numb to the situation. But nothing felt weird the rest of the trip. It was just a very strange first couple of nights there.
JIM HAROLD: To me – we had somebody on recently who had some roommates and they had some strangeness going on, and the first thought is, “This might not be a ghost; this might be a real person messing around in my room.” That had to be maybe on your mind too?
DANIELLE: Right. That would’ve been more of a concern for me if say something had been messed up in the room, or if we had been on a lower level. We were on the sixth floor, and there was no way for someone to crawl up the balcony. There was no actual balcony there. It was just a door that opened up. There was nowhere to walk on. But I don’t know. It was very weird. But that didn’t scare me as much as it just didn’t make any sense. The whole thing just didn’t make any sense.
JIM HAROLD: Well, a lot of the time this stuff doesn’t seem to make much sense, you know?
DANIELLE: I guess that’s true.
JIM HAROLD: It really doesn’t. It’s like, okay, what was that all about? Maybe I missed it, but did you know much about the history of the place, aside from it being old and recently renovated?
DANIELLE: Not really. We got a really good deal on it. That’s all I really know. My husband does most of that planning. I do know that Charleston is a pretty historical city that has similar stories, ghosty stories. But I don’t know much about the actual hotel that we were staying in. But I do know that it had been closed for a really long time, and it had just recently been renovated. That’s what I always thought, was maybe something had been in there and it wasn’t used to people coming in and out, and it just wanted to mess with me.
JIM HAROLD: I thought about the renovation angle because they say that the spirits do not like it when their places are messed with.
DANIELLE: Right, exactly. That’s what I’ve heard too.
JIM HAROLD: There you have it. Danielle, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire, and stay spooky.
DANIELLE: Stay spooky, Jim! Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Stitch Fix. When it comes to looking good, Stitch Fix has you covered. Say goodbye to endless browsing and hello to fresh picks, curated for your taste and size – because your style isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s about what suits your body and what suits the moment, and that’s where Stitch Fix comes in. If you want to look good but don’t have time to shop, then Stitch Fix is for you.
Recently, I did a “Fix,” and it is fantastic. It was really great. They sent around some great picks, some things that I thought fit me perfectly, and I was so glad. Here’s how it works. Whether you need refined workwear or casual basics, Stitch Fix can help you elevate your look. You can schedule a Fix, and a style expert will send you five pieces that fit your style, size, and price range. They did that for me, and I was amazed by the picks because they were great. They’ll send items that work for your unique frame so you can look and feel your best from sunup to sundown. Keep what you like and return the rest for free. Or, if you prefer to shop but don’t want to endlessly browse, then check out Stitch Fix Freestyle. It’s an online shop built just for you. From flannels to bomber jackets, you’ll find items that match your vibe and lifestyle. And this is for men and women.
To get started, take a Style Quiz so Stitch Fix can learn your preferences, from your favorite colors to preferred fits and price ranges. They’ll help you get fresh items easily from brands you know and trust. It is indeed time to style smarter, and not harder. And I can certainly appreciate that.
So, get started by filling out your free Style Quiz at stitchfix.com/campfire, and take advantage of free shipping and returns. Yes, that is stitchfix.com/campfire to try Stitch Fix. Stitchfix.com/campfire. S-t-i-t-c-h-f-i-x dot com slash campfire, and we support them, you support us, so please do check it out – Stitch Fix. Thanks, Stitch Fix!
Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our Virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Oh, I love to hear from our callers over in the UK. Patty is on the line from England. We’re so glad to speak with him. His sister Lisa told him about the show, so thank you, Lisa, and stay spooky. And let that be a lesson, everybody. Tell your friends. Tell your friends about the show. We appreciate what Lisa did. Patty says, “I do not believe, but I’m still afraid.” [laughs] So I can’t wait to hear what made him afraid. Patty, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us, and tell us what happened.
PATTY: Thanks very much, Jim. Thanks for having me and thank you from everybody in the UK as well for sharing all the stories from yourself and your listeners.
A very brief background to myself and my journey through the paranormal and ghost investigations. When I was reasonably young, 17-18, I’d come home from delivering pizzas and my mother would be sat on the sofa watching some of these ghost programs – you know, the kind where people run around screaming.
JIM HAROLD: Yes, yes, I know the kind. [laughs]
PATTY: They’re still going strong so many years later. I won’t give away my age. I realized that I had a bit of a fear about this, and it worried me. So after a period of time, I thought, I can’t let this fear get into my life too much, so I threw myself into it. I watched all of the programs, and I became a big fan. I went along for quite a while enjoying these programs, but staying very skeptical. But the one thing I did realize I enjoyed is the history of the beautiful buildings that they’re visiting, the interesting stories and events that they’re capturing throughout their investigations – but more importantly, the human interest side of the stories as well.
As time went on, a few years went past, I met my now wife, and I had this still healthy interest but fear of these programs. She decided to book one of these events where you go on a ghost tour. An organized, paid-for event. This first event I attended was at the London Tombs. London Tombs are underneath the River Thames, on the south bank, by London Bridge. I don’t know if you know the full history of it, but I hope your listeners go off and discover it themselves. But in the last 20 years or so, they found remains dating back to the 11th century up to the 17th century. This place was a plague pit.
JIM HAROLD: It’s amazing to me because we went to a place in London – and I can’t remember where it was – where we had lunch, and it was in a tomb. It was really amazing.
PATTY: It is. I mean, London’s been a city for a very long time, 1,500 years or so. There’s lots of places like that. But it does sound like that could’ve been London Tombs, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah. It might’ve been we were near London Bridge, now that I think about it. It was amazing.
PATTY: It probably was. It’s Disney-fied, if you like, with attractions and whatnot there, but we managed to get an event where we could stay overnight in the London Tombs. We walked around doing investigation. And again, I defy anybody not to be scared, whether they’re skeptical or not, walking around in the dark, shadows in the side of your eye, and all these things that happened.
About halfway through the night, the organizers said, “Go off in your groups. There’s a few things you can do. There’s auto-drawing and glasswork and various things.” A couple of ladies with us that we didn’t know started doing some glasswork. In a similar fashion to a Ouija board, say, you put a torch down on a table, you upturn a glass, you ask some questions, “move towards the light for yes, away from the light for no.” I was fascinated by the psychology behind it. We all understand those ideomotor skills that potentially could be moving the glass. But I’d never done this before.
I asked them to move the glass – there were four of us doing it at this point, three ladies and myself – and you can tell when people are moving the glass, Jim. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it yourself. You can feel the direction that the push is coming from. We carried on asking the questions. I wasn’t asking any questions at this point. But when I did, the glass started moving with a bit more physics behind it, bit more of a push behind it. So I started asking questions, and I don’t know why – I started asking, “Did you know me?” The answer was quite clearly yes.
You go through the alphabet to ask names, and it came to a particular letter of the alphabet, which I’ll reveal later, and went through an entire name. Came to the name. “You knew me? How were we related previously?” It gave an answer and a very specific number, which again, I’ll come back to in the next part of my recollection.
That time passed and I thought, “This is great fun.” So I started trying to join other ghost groups, other investigation groups, that weren’t paid for. Over a period of time, I joined a number of different ones. As a skeptic, as I said, you always go through this initial meeting of “I am skeptical, I like to try and find if there’s any scientific reason behind some of the phenomena that you might be experiencing,” and you ask these questions and then you get people saying, “Oh yeah, I’m exactly the same as you,” and then they turn around and say, “But my spirit guide says this,” and you think, “Here we go again. Okay.” Because I’m a nonbeliever to that extent, it’s a little bit off-putting.
One day, I managed to join a group for the first time. I’d never met any of these people before. There are about eight of us. To the east of London is the River Medway that feeds into the Thames in a county called Kent. We went to a place called Fort Horsted. Fort Horsted was built in the early 18th century, 19th century, basically as a munitions place to keep the river safe and to keep the dockyard safe. It was very quick over that period of time that it became redundant because of the way the ammunition worked, so it became a storage place for munitions and was used throughout the First and Second World War to store munitions.
I encourage your listeners as well to look up so they can understand how this place is made up. It’s essentially like a bicycle wheel, where it’s dug out in the middle and pushed up, so the escarpments are in the middle, and there’s tunnels that come out from the center to the edges, which becomes important.
Over a period of time, it went through various different levels of ownership, and through the 1970s, it was owned by a gentleman who had a tire business, and he stored tires there. In 1976, a fire broke out that lasted for quite a few weeks. About 100,000 tires onsite, and apparently at one point there were 50 firefighters there attacking the fire.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my.
PATTY: No one was hurt, to our knowledge, to any of the records. But this fire is important to part of the story. If you can imagine brick tunnels with no daylight underneath the earth, extreme heat tends to glassify brick and remove any dust and dirt. This is where it got a bit fascinating for me. We went into a room that hadn’t been opened before, two of us. It’d been used during the First and Second World War for storage. This is the human interest part as well that interests me.
There was graffiti from the First World War where people stationed there had been drawing pictures of their hand and lots of notes back home, “Wish I wasn’t here,” and swear words that you don’t expect your grandparents or great-grandparents to put on the wall. I found this fascinating. We were calling out, and nothing occurred.
Then we walked down the steps, along the tunnel, and back up the steps. I was wearing a down jacket at the time, a puffer jacket we call it in the UK. I don’t know if you call it the same thing. I heard very clearly a small stone hitting the back of me. As I said, there’s nowhere for these things to fall from because essentially, the area is glassified. So we called out again. No response. Took a step up the stairs; a person was in front of me. Again, a stone hit my jacket. This happened about three or four times. We couldn’t see anybody. There was nobody there, nothing happening at all. This is one of the only things that’s happened to me that I can’t rationally explain.
About 20 minutes later, we’re in a room, everybody’s a little bit tired but still wide awake and wired, and a couple of the people there started doing some glasswork. As I said, I’ve never met these people before. It was a new group to me, so I’m on my best behavior. I was sat around the corner of the room, just watching whilst two or three of them were moving this glass around the table. The glass kept coming towards me. I kept quiet. But every time they asked a question, it wasn’t answering the question; the glass was coming towards me.
One of them said, “Would you mind standing up and putting your finger on the glass?” I was like, “No problem at all.” So I did, and the glass was moving quite slowly as they were asking the questions. Then one of them said, “Would you like Patty to ask the questions?” The glass flew across the table towards me. One of them actually let go of it this time as well. I was still holding on to it. So I started asking questions.
I think you can probably guess where this is going. The first question I asked was, “What’s your name?” We went through the alphabet, and it came to “C,” and it said “yes.” It was exactly the same name that came through probably I think maybe two years previously with completely different people, and that name was Charlotte. Exactly the same answers came through. Charlotte apparently was married to me in the early 17th century, and we had, weirdly, 11 children together, 9 of whom survived.
For this information to come through to me with two different sets of people at two different times is something I still cannot to this day really explain. There were some other questions as well that came through, which maybe I won’t give the answers to right now, Jim, because I know you’ve been to the UK before. Potentially, if you come again, if you have the time, maybe we should meet up and try an experiment ourselves.
JIM HAROLD: Sounds interesting. I will let you know. I’ve got to tell you, to me these are some of the most compelling stories, when you have someone who has a skeptical nature – which is fine. Some people who are into the paranormal are like, “I don’t want anything to do with those skeptics.” No, I like talking to skeptics. We’ve had skeptics as guests on the Paranormal Podcast – Joe Nickell, Dr. Michael Shermer, who I really liked. I guess what I’m saying is that I think it’s a useful counterbalance. Sometimes those of us, I think, on the believer side are a little too much on the believer side, and we tend to believe everything all the time. On the other hand, I think that we have some wisdom to give to the skeptics as well. So I like this meeting in the middle kind of thing. Some of my favorite stories that we get are from skeptics.
Have you become a skeptical believer? Where do you stand now?
PATTY: I don’t know if there’s a term, but a positive skeptic, I’d say. I would like to believe, but I would like to have another experience like that. I haven’t had the opportunity to do that again within a safe space, if you like. But it’s interesting what you say because there’s a quote that I can remember from a medium who used to work in the UK: to the believer, no proof is necessary; to the nonbeliever, no proof is enough.
JIM HAROLD: Right, is sufficient, exactly.
PATTY: Right, I’m paraphrasing. Apologies.
JIM HAROLD: Patty, thank you for keeping an open mind, and keep us up to date on your adventures.
PATTY: Thank you very much, Jim. Thank you again, and stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, when you are your best version of you, your best self, you can get a lot done. I know how that feels. I’ve been in that zone before. But I’ve also been in the other zone, when you feel overwhelmed or maybe you’re not showing up quite the way you would want to. One thing that can help is working with a therapist. They can help you get closer to the best version of you because when you feel empowered, you’re more prepared to take on everything life throws at you.
I’ve been there, and there’s times that I wish I would’ve turned to a therapist. But there was not BetterHelp. But now there is, and I think you should look into it if you think that you need help. It can help you learn positive coping skills, how to set boundaries. It can empower you to be that best version of yourself that I mentioned before. It isn’t just if you’ve experienced major trauma. So if you’re thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It’s convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online, and it’s so easy to get started. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and I like the fact that they allow you to switch therapists any time for no additional charge. Doesn’t mean that they’re a bad therapist. They could be a very good therapist, but they just don’t fit with you. Different people fit differently. So you have that opportunity to switch any time you like.
So, again, if you feel you need a little bit of extra help, I highly recommend checking out BetterHelp. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com/jimharold today to get 10% off your first month. That’s betterhelp.com/jimharold. That’s betterhelp dot com slash j-i-m-h-a-r-o-l-d. And we thank BetterHelp for their support of Jim Harold’s Campfire.
You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Well, over the last couple of months, one of my favorite features is talking to fellow podcasters about their spooky stories. J from the Cryptique Podcast is joining us today. He’s going to share a black-eyed kid story with us that happened to some of his family, and I can’t wait to hear it. And then he’s going to tell us a little bit about the show. J, welcome to the show. You told me I believe your aunt and uncle had a black-eyed kid encounter at something called Zombie Road? Tell us more about that. It’s really got my interest piqued.
J: Zombie Road is a place in St. Louis County, Missouri, and it is just filled with the paranormal. Just about anything you can imagine, people have seen there, they have witnessed there, they’ve experienced there. It’s an amazing place. This story that my aunt told me from when she was a kid is absolutely terrifying. There’s not a whole lot of black-eyed kid stories out there, and this one is just amazing.
So let’s set the scene a little bit. First off, we are in a farmhouse that is about 20 yards off of some railroad tracks. Behind the house, there’s a ridge, and it goes maybe 100 feet up. It’s not super steep. But they one day, as kids will do, decided that they wanted to play hide-and-seek. What better place to play than in the woods behind your house, right?
JIM HAROLD: Yeah.
J: Well, maybe not. It was about five or six of the kids. My aunt at the time I believe was like 10, 11, 12, right in that range. This happened quite a long time ago. But decided to run up into the woods and hide behind a tree. She could peek from behind the tree and see where the person who was “it” was doing the counting, waiting for them to hide. So she kept her eyes on him and was going to duck back when he came out to look for them.
She heard a rustling behind her. It was the fall, and she could hear the crackling leaves. She looked back, and right behind her was the boy who was supposed to be doing the counting. She turned around and glanced at him and she said, “Terry? You cheated!” Then she looked back, and believe it or not, Terry was still down by the house, counting, waiting for them to hide.
You know, kids don’t necessarily see a danger like we do. They just kind of experience the world. But she looked back and there was the same kid. His eyes were completely black, like reflective black. There were no pupils, there were no irises. It was just black reflection, like shark eyes. She screamed. And when she screamed, he screamed and took off running. The way she described it is when we see in videos where someone fades out of a shot, like they just kind of evaporate. She said that she saw him running away, laughing, and he just started to fade away, and he disappeared.
Now, what’s interesting is she could still hear footsteps of him running and see little saplings being pushed and brush and stuff like that. It’s kind of different than what we normally hear in the traditional black-eyed kid stories, but it’s terrifying. I can’t imagine that. And this was long before they had colored contacts and stuff like that. So she was terrified. She wanted to quit. The other kids stayed and played, and they laughed at her and teased her about it.
But at this same house, there’s been some other experiences. That’s a short story. Just a couple quick short stories, real quick, from this house.
They had an entity that lived there that they called “The Mummy.” He stayed in the back room. An old farmhouse is going to have a huge mudroom on the back where you go in and you throw your overalls and your boots and all that stuff. She said that they would hear what sounded like nails being drug across the floor. Every once in a while – not every time, but when they would hear this, they would run back there and look, and what they described, why they called it “The Mummy,” is because it looked like it was in a straitjacket, and its arms were folded in front of it and it was standing up and kind of floated, but it dragged its toenails across the floor in the back.
JIM HAROLD: Yikes.
J: You can imagine how terrifying that would be.
JIM HAROLD: No question.
J: Another time, all in this same house, they had another entity that they called “Old Blue.” This was just a human form blue ghost that would from time to time appear in their house. It’s terrifying. They told me a story one time – this was my aunt and her sister – they heard Old Blue and they ran into a pantry and closed the door. This pantry had the louvers, I guess, like a vent that lets the light in. And they saw this giant, glowing blue hand reach for the knob to the pantry door, and then they heard their dad yell for them. He had just gotten home and he yelled for them, and they said in a snap, it disappeared.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my gosh.
J: In another story, one of the girls was in her bed, and she saw the train lights on the wall, which was not unusual. But then she saw something about the size of – somewhere between a ping-pong ball and a tennis ball, just a black ball float out of the corner. She thought it was something from the train, like something in the window that was casting a shadow or something like that. But she said that it slowly grew appendages, like smoky appendages that came out slowly. She sat and watched it as it turned into this humanlike form.
She was paralyzed with fear, of course, as most of us would be. But she mustered up a scream, and she said when she screamed, everything went in complete reverse. It didn’t disappear; the smoky appendages kind of sucked back into this black ball that shrunk down and then shot back into the wall.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
J: Yeah. We think that my aunt and her sister may be able to see things that maybe not everybody sees, but I can’t imagine how terrifying this would be as a kid.
JIM HAROLD: Oh, absolutely. And even going back to that black-eyed kid story, you had two things. One, you had the black-eyed kid aspect, which is very strange. Then you have the doppelganger aspect, which we hear more and more of on the Campfire show. Imposters and that kind of thing. Very interesting. So this house was in that Zombie Road area?
J: Yes. It is actually at the beginning of what we call the Zombie Road – I don’t want to call it a section of road. It’s basically a long gravel road that runs alongside railroad tracks and then cuts up into woods and then ends up being a park by an elementary school. But at this time, this was very, very rural. There were no parks, there were no schools there or anything. There’s just so many stories that come out of there. I mean, there’s been Sasquatch stories that have come from there. And those were from a long time ago, too. But there are stories of black pumas or mountain lions, and nobody even thinks that we have mountain lions here, but they’ve been captured on scout cams, trail cams. So there’s really no denying it. Just the thought that there could be an all-black mountain lion out there is a little scary too.
But then we’ve got so many deaths on the railroad tracks in that area, which we think is what’s causing this. There’s just so many tragedies that happened in this mile-and-a-half-long stretch of gravel road – people accidentally being hit by trains, people committing suicide by train. There’s even a story – there was a railroad worker, and they had set up little campsite type areas for the railroad workers. This was obviously a long time ago. This guy was a hard luck gambler, and he lost his wife, so the story goes, in a poker match, and he went home that night and hung himself right in the little hut that was for the railroad workers. Car wrecks.
There’s an incident where there’s a railroad bridge that goes over the river there where these two men – I call them men; they’re more like monsters – they were methamphetamine addicts. I believe this was in the late ’90s. They broke into an older lady’s home and beat her up to steal from her, obviously, and they thought she was dead. They zipped her up in a sleeping bag and threw her off the train bridge, and when police found her, she had water in her lungs, so she had died from drowning, not from the beating.
JIM HAROLD: Terrible.
J: It’s a lot of tragedy in that area. If you guys are ever in the St. Louis area, you should check it out. It’s legal to walk up and down the road. Like I said, some of it’s a park now. You can’t be there after dark, but it’s a beautiful place, a lot of tragedy and a lot of hauntings.
JIM HAROLD: Very interesting indeed.
J: I don’t know, that’s my Campfire story.
JIM HAROLD: There you go. Very interesting indeed, and I’m sure people want to hear the Cryptique Podcast, so give us a couple minutes of what it is and where we can find it.
J: You can find the Cryptique Podcast on pretty much any major podcast provider – Apple, Spotify, all the big ones and all the little ones. Check it out. We talk about a lot of paranormal activity. We talk about hauntings. We talk about demonology. We talk about everything from conspiracy theories, forbidden archeology, and we do have a complete story on things that happened at Zombie Road, a whole episode on it. So that might be fun.
JIM HAROLD: Well, I hope everybody checks it out, and thanks for being a part of the Campfire.
J: Thanks for having us.
JIM HAROLD: Alex is on the line from Northern California. She heard about us from the great folks over at And That’s Why We Drink, Christine and Em. So be sure to check out their podcast if you have not yet had an opportunity. Alex has a few stories. She’s going to tell us a couple today. First up is one about her uncle. Alex, welcome to the show. Please tell us what happened.
ALEX: Hey, Jim. Thank you again for having me. Quick backstory, I am originally from Arizona, so this is where that story takes place. This is about 30 years ago, 40 years ago, before I was born, but this is a story that everyone loves to tell in my family.
My uncle and his girlfriend at the time were living in an older house in Northern Arizona. Middle of the night, they were sleeping in bed; they hear this loud crash. From what I understand, there’s a little hallway walking into their bedroom, and there’s a giant mirror that hangs there. So that is what they’re assuming happened, so when they hear this little crash, my uncle looks up and sees this gentleman at the end of his bed. On your past stories, people say that it’s like a TV static kind of look to their apparitions, and that is what he saw.
He sat up, looked around, noticed that his girlfriend at the time didn’t seem to hear the noise, didn’t see this person, so he’s like, “I’m absolutely not going to go check that out. I’m just going to lie here and pretend like I didn’t see it.” So he goes back to bed. First thing in the morning, he wakes up, she wakes up, she goes, “Did you see that last night?” And that was the end of that story. She saw it, he saw it, but it was one of those things where neither one of them wanted to acknowledge it in the moment. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: I’m the same way. You would think, after having done literally thousands of episodes on the Paranormal, hundreds of episodes of this show, that I would be chill with it. But sometimes something happens like, “Am I being crazy? Should I mention this to anybody?” So I don’t want people to feel when they have doubts that it’s unique to them; I think most of us, even when we experience something that’s pretty obvious that it’s something otherworldly, or potentially otherworldly, that we pooh-pooh it, we try to push it off. Even I do it.
Alex, I know you have many other stories. What’s another one you can share with us?
ALEX: This one is about my house currently. Like you said, I am in Northern California. Me and my family live in a historic home, actually, that got named historic earlier last year.
JIM HAROLD: Cool.
ALEX: It is over 100 years old. The gentleman’s family that we purchased it from, he had unfortunately passed away in this house. I didn’t really think anything of it. A lot of homes, whether you know it or not, there has been some kind of passing of sorts. So wasn’t super strange, wasn’t super worried about it, didn’t even think too much. We have two dogs; this story involves them. We have all hardwood floors.
One night, me and my fiancé were getting our girls ready for bed. We put them into their bedroom and were getting them all set for bed, getting them lying down and stuff. Our dogs have this hollow bone that they play with, and it is very noisy on our hardwood floors, so I distinctly remember about an hour before bedtime, I took it away from our dogs and set it up on this little bookshelf we have in our TV room.
As we’re in the back of the house getting the girls all set, I hear this loud bang, and I’m like, oh my goodness, my dogs have jumped up on the bookcase shelf and got their bone down. I’m like, I’ll deal with it once the girls are asleep. They’re asleep, I come out into the hallway and I look into the kitchen, and I see the dog bone. I’m like, that is very strange considering we have 16-month-old twins, so our kitchen is blocked off. We have baby gates. I’m thinking to myself, there’s no way that the dog went from the living room into the kitchen, over the gate, with the bone. It’s just one of those strange things. How did the bone get here when I know that the dogs do not have access to this area?
I tell my fiancé, “That noise that we heard was the bone that we had just put away.” He’s like, “No, it’s not. There’s no way it’s in the kitchen.” I’m like, “Uh, you can go look. I promise you it’s there.” He knows I’m a big fan of paranormal stuff, so he just kind of laughed about it and was like, “You’re looking for something to happen,” pretty much. I’m like, “I promise you it was more than that.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: There’s a thing called – I don’t know if you’ve heard me mention it on the shows before – it’s called JOTT, just one of those things. It’s where things are in one place and then they appear somewhere else. There’s a book about it called JOTT (Just One of Those Things). It’s on Amazon. The author unfortunately passed a couple of years back, I think a year or two ago. Her name is Mary Rose Barrington, and she had been in this stuff for decades. She’s English. I did get to interview her about it, and it’s so sad because we’ve had so many people report this kind of thing, and I’ve mentioned this book so many times; I wish I could’ve shared it with her. But it just started coming up after her passing.
But it’s a very common thing that things end up where they shouldn’t be, and there’s no real explanation for how they end up that way. Mary Rose theorized there is a supernatural component to that. Well, Alex, I know you’ve got more stories. I hope you’ll sign back up. Appreciate you being a part of the Campfire, and stay spooky.
ALEX: Stay spooky, Jim! Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Stacy is on the line from Utah, and he has a haunted cabin. I’ll say no more. I’ll let him take it from there because it sounds like there’s a lot of room to run with that one. Stacy, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Tell us what happened.
STACY: Thank you, Jim. We have a family-owned cabin. It was built in 1946. My great-grandpa built it for his wife, and it has been in the family ever since then. We’ve taken real good care of it. And we think that either my great-grandpa or my great-grandma is haunting the place. I recently talked with all my siblings and asked them about any kind of experiences they had. Most of them are that they feel the presence of these spirits.
One of my brothers – I’d say he’s pretty close to – he’s got some experiences where he’s seen ghosts, spirits, and can tell their intentions. He’s like, “Yeah, there’s a few spirits up there that I can feel,” and we hear footsteps quite often in the upstairs loft, where we’re all downstairs having fun and we all can hear someone walking upstairs. We’re like, “No one’s up there, right? All the kids are asleep and no one’s up there?”
But one of the craziest experiences that I had personally was one night, we had a full cabin. The entire loft was full with family, and myself and my brothers were sleeping on the couches downstairs on the main floor. Middle of the night, I wake up to hearing footsteps upstairs. I’m like, “Okay, it’s probably just someone that needs to go to the bathroom or something.” Then they start coming down the stairs. As they’re coming down the stairs, I hear this voice that is unrecognizable from a family member of anyone who is up there, and they were calling out for our dog that we had brought up, our dog Daniel. You hear this little whistle, (whistles), “Come here, Danny. Come here, boy.”
It freaked me out. I didn’t know what to do because I was halfway under my covers, and I just threw them over my head. No one was up that night. As soon as I covered my head and was huddled there, after a minute the whistling and the calling stopped. No one was there. It was the weirdest experience. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that is a weird experience. Do you feel comfortable staying in the cabin after that?
STACY: Oh yes, we go up there every time it’s our family’s turn. We’re always up there, and we’re always kind of expecting to hear something, at least the footsteps, and feeling the presences. But it has not deterred us one bit.
JIM HAROLD: That’s one of those things where it’s kind of neat in a way, if you can come to terms with it. Some people can, some people can’t. I think it depends. It doesn’t seem like it’s a nasty kind of thing going on, is it?
STACY: No, not at all. We’ve never felt any sort of evil presence. It’s never been anything like that.
JIM HAROLD: That’s a pretty cool story indeed. A haunted cabin. Can you keep us up to date if there are any more goings-on?
STACY: I would love to, for sure.
JIM HAROLD: Stacy, thank you so much for joining us and being a part of the Campfire today.
STACY: Thank you, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Christine is on the line from Michigan.
CHRISTINE: Hi.
JIM HAROLD: She has some stories to share. Hi, Christine. How are you? Welcome to the Campfire. Tell us your story.
CHRISTINE: Thank you so much. I love it that you chose me to be on the show. It’s just amazing to me. My story starts out when I was a little girl. I was about six years old. We had been living at the time in Jerome, Michigan, which is towards the border of Michigan and Ohio.
My grandfather died on October 2nd, 1981, which is kind of a significant date to me. My dad ended up inheriting his family home that was located in Jackson, so we moved. I was about six years old. It was my mom and my dad and my sister, Cara. We moved into this tiny little – it was a two-bedroom bungalow. I’m telling ya, there’s nothing really scary about it. Not compared to where we had lived before. It was just your typical little house.
Almost immediately, I started having what I thought at the time – I wasn’t sure, and my parents weren’t sure what they were, but I would wake up screaming almost every single night. I would see things. I would see dark figures in the room. I would hear voices in my head accompanying these dark figures. I would see faces materializing in my vision. And being six years old, it really scared me. I would wake up and I would scream, and as time went on, my parents used to call them “screamer dreams.”
As it went on, it got to the point where this was happening every single night. My dad was tired of being woken up, so he would sleep with me in bed. I remember one time specifically – there was a couple of times – I remember waking up and I was just lying in bed, and I was fully awake at the time. I looked towards my doorway, and the light was on in the hallway. And I saw a figure of a woman standing there. At first I thought it was my mother, so I called out to her, “Mom, Mom! Why are you just standing there?” She didn’t say anything. I called out to her again. She didn’t say anything.
It was then that I realized that it was not my mother. I remember huddling under the covers and putting the covers up over my head and peeking out, but the lady never went away. She just stood there, and I fell asleep.
Around the same time, my dad – like I said, he was sleeping with me in bed, and I remember waking up and hearing – he used to have these little pale-colored earbuds, and he used to always have them on, and I could hear – I don’t know, he used to listen to NPR radio or Paul Harvey. I could hear that going on, and I remember glancing up towards the other side of the room where my sister’s bed was, and there was a woman sitting on the side of her bed. There were no features. I just could see the outline of a woman. I woke my dad up and I said, “Dad! Do you see her? She’s sitting there.” He looks up and he goes, “Oh, Chris, it’s nothing. Just go back to bed, hon. It’s okay.” But she was there, and I saw it. I remember doing the same thing – putting the covers up over my head and just watching her until I fell asleep.
My night terrors went on through my adolescence, into my adulthood, and I ended up buying that house in 1999 and I raised my five children there. As a teenager, they turned into sleep paralysis episodes and sleepwalking, and they were pretty intense. My kids also experienced paranormal activity in that house. Loud bangs, unexplained happenings, that kind of thing. I know my daughter Ayla was just telling me about how someone pulled her leg from behind the recliner chair.
I remember after my daughter Sydney was born, about three weeks after that, I looked up – I had her in bed with me, I looked up, and there was my grandmother standing there, looking down at us. She had this red coat on with glittery red buttons, and that was her good coat. Just so many things happened in that house.
Now, I just wanted to also say that – it’s kind of a weird experience. My dad died in 2011, and he actually passed away on October 2nd, 2011. Earlier in the story, his dad died October 2nd, 1981, so I always felt, with them being 30 years apart, that that was not a coincidence, that that truly was meant to happen, that my grandfather must’ve come and got my dad when it was his time.
JIM HAROLD: Right. That’s interesting. I always do find that interesting when people die on dates of significance. I always wonder, for example, people who pass on Christmas and those kinds of things. You just wonder if there was a reason for that, if that was a particularly important day to them. It is interesting when people pass, or when you have the thing that I’ve seen, when you have two people that are close to each other, a husband/wife, a brother/sister, whatever it might be, one dies and then in three or four days, the other one dies too.
CHRISTINE: And that is something that’s happened in our family. I won’t go into much detail, but my sister had stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and she passed away September 10th, 2020, and that was the day before my dad’s birthday. So I always felt – and it gives me comfort because she went through a lot, she was such an amazing person, that our dad came to get her.
JIM HAROLD: Interesting. Well, I know you have more stories. I hope that you will return and tell us more on a future edition of the Campfire. Christine, thank you so much for being a part of the program today.
CHRISTINE: Thank you so much. I just had so much fun. I was pretty nervous, but it all went smoothly. Thank you so much.
JIM HAROLD: There you go, and stay spooky.
CHRISTINE: Thank you. Stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: We did it again. Another Campfire safely landed. And thank you for being a part of it. We certainly do appreciate it oh so much. And make sure that you please tell a friend if you enjoy what we do.
And before we go, we have a very special shoutout. This is from Russell. He writes saying, “Good evening, Jim. My wife, Carla, is a longtime listener and avid fan of your Campfire show. We never go on a long car ride without the podcast to entertain us. I was wondering if there’s a way she could get a birthday shoutout on one of your episodes. Her birthday is on February 20th, and we are from Richland, Washingotn. If this is possible, I know it would just make her day. Thank you, and keep rolling out the great show.” Well, thank you very much, Russell, and it is my pleasure to say happy birthday, Carla! And stay spooky.
And if you want your own birthday shoutout via video for yourself, a loved one, a pep talk, anniversary congratulations, whatever it might be, please check out my Cameo page. There you can get your very own video shoutout, and that is at cameo.com/thejimharold. That’s cameo.com/thejimharold. C-a-m-e-o dot com slash thejimharold. It helps us if you go straight through that website. I know they have an app, but it works better for us if you go through that website, cameo.com/thejimharold. And it helps support our shows, and we try to make it very economical for everyone. A personalized video is only $29. I looked over at that site and there’s people charging a lot more than $29. [laughs] $200, $300. Of course, we’re talking really, really famous people. I’m just micro-famous, internet famous I guess. But regardless, you listened to this show and that’s what counts.
I thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe and 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.
—
For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE