A “cry baby” nighttime ghost, a haunted prison, a mysterious voice saves a young woman, and much more strangeness 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 once again, and I hope you’re having a great week. We are here for some spooky stories, so welcome to the program.
Before we get going, I need to make a major announcement about a major announcement. This weekend will mark our 14th anniversary of the Campfire. I can hardly believe it myself. And we are going to do something, folks. We are going to do something we have never done in the history of Campfire, and it is so cool! … And I can’t tell you until 10 a.m. this coming Tuesday. That is April 11th. 10 a.m. Eastern, April 11th, I will spill the tea, I will spill the beans, and all will be revealed. All I can say is if you’re in the Northeast part of the United States, you might want to pay special attention – on social media, on the podcasts, and at jimharold.com.
And with that little bit of suspense, we’ll go on to our Campfire stories.
Next up on the line is John. He heard about us on one of the other great podcasts out there and decided to tune in, and he’s been with us ever since. He’s going to talk to us about what he calls “an invisible runner.” John, I can’t wait to hear about this. Tell us what happened.
JOHN: About a year ago now, my wife and my two sons – they were three and four at the time – we were moving back to Michigan. We moved into this place. It’s kind of a shotgun-style place, so their bedroom is at one end of the house and our bedroom is at the other end. One night, not too long after we moved in, my wife and I are lying in bed and we hear what to me sounded like the distinct sound of a toddler running across the house, their feet hitting the floor, bam, bam, bam, bam. You could feel the vibrations and everything. We get up out of bed, fully expecting to find my youngest son up and about, and we make it all the way through the house and back to their room and they’re both in bed asleep. This happens a few times. That’s why we refer to it as “the invisible runner.”
Now, about this time also, my youngest was potty training. He had me sitting in there with him one time because he didn’t like being alone, and he turns to me and he says, “I don’t like the dark, Daddy.” I say, “Okay, what don’t you like, buddy?” He says, “In the dark, the Cry Baby comes.”
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Ooh boy. You gave me chills.
JOHN: I say, “The Cry Baby? What’s that?” He says, “The Cry Baby used to be a person, but then they got hurt by a car tire, like a real car, a car tire, and now they can go through walls, and they come at night.”
JIM HAROLD: Oh jeez. Oh my gosh, oh man. You buried the lead there with “the invisible runner.” Ooh, the Cry Baby. [laughs] Yikes.
JOHN: At that point, this is the most complex thing my son has ever said to me. He’s usually saying – three-word sentences are a big sentence for him. So it’s slowly dawning on me that what he’s describing to me is a child who’s been hurt in an automobile accident. I try to sit there and figure out where he might’ve come up with that. I really can’t. There’s no shows we watch that he would’ve picked that up from. You combine that with the distinct sound of a toddler running through the house at night, and it really freaked me out.
JIM HAROLD: So was there any further – it just stopped and that was the last of it? Your son never mentioned the Cry Baby again?
JOHN: He didn’t mention it again. We do still hear occasionally a thump in the night. Not quite as often – in the beginning, that happened like every other night. Now we occasionally hear a thump somewhere in the house, there’s a sound, but nothing too extreme. And the boys don’t seem to be bothered by anything.
JIM HAROLD: That’s creepy, man. [laughs] I mean, the Cry Baby. The thing is, we’ve had accounts where small kids, like your son’s age, have experienced things at a very young age and then they will say things that are uncharacteristic or longer sentences. A perfect example is – you may or may not have heard this – we had a woman who called in and I think her son was similar age to yours. Anyway, what she liked to do when she was traveling back and forth to work – she worked nights – she liked to listen to the great radio show Coast to Coast AM, which is about a lot of the stuff we talk about on here, spooky stuff.
One night, I think it was George Norry or whoever had this guest talking about Reptilians. Now, I think that’s pretty out there. I don’t necessarily believe that there are a bunch of Reptilians out there running the world or anything. But they were talking about Reptilians, and she came home and she was at the dinner table with her, her husband, and their son, similar age to your boy. She was telling her husband about this radio show and about the Reptilians.
Now, her husband’s very much a skeptic of anything paranormal or out there. I think he said something like, “Okay, let’s say” – because she said she didn’t really buy that Reptilians were running the world or anything like that, or hiding in plain sight, but she did think there was enough interesting about it that it was worthy of discussion. So she’s talking with her husband, and she’s telling him about this, and he said, “Look, if this were going on and there were thousands of Reptilians running around doing all their nefarious deeds, why wouldn’t we know about it yet?”
And the son is playing in his carrots and peas and he looks up and he says, “People not ready yet.” [laughs] Now, again, I don’t believe in the whole thing about Reptilians – although we’ve done a show or two about it on our other shows because I want to hear the theories and so forth. Even if I don’t think they’re a thing, I want to know the theories. But the funny thing was that, again, a small child saying something way beyond his years and beyond what he usually says. Makes you think.
JOHN: Right. Showing an advanced comprehension.
JIM HAROLD: Exactly. John, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire today. I certainly appreciate it.
JOHN: Thank you for having me.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Sabrina from Seattle, and we’re so glad to have her. She listens to us on her Echo Show, which I think is very cool. She’s going to take us back to her childhood and tell us about some strangeness that ensued. Sabrina, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, thank you for listening, and tell us what happened.
SABRINA: Thank you, Jim. This happened to me when I was seven or eight. I grew up in Northeast Ohio.
JIM HAROLD: Me too.
SABRINA: It’s a great place to grow up, definitely. My father was semi-famous. Because of his work, we needed to have a hunting cabin. It was in Titusville, PA. My family would go a few times a year. It was just your basic, regular hunting cabin, nothing exciting. But this particular time, my siblings didn’t come – I have two siblings – and my parents and I went to the cabin. My mom and dad were busy in our van, taking things out, putting things in, that sort of thing. I wandered around the back, and in the back of the cabin, we had owned about 50 acres or so. My father always cut the grass. A really big area. We had our outhouse, and beyond that was a deer stand.
I was young; I wanted to pick berries. We had huckleberries and blackberries. So I took my little bucket, my mom and dad waved at me and said, “Go on.” I was standing back there, and all of a sudden I heard the grass move. Didn’t think anything of it. There was a lot of wildlife. Then I saw the grass really move, like it was going back and forth in a zig-zag pattern. That was beyond the hunting stand.
When it got to the point of the stand, I could see a hat. There was a bit of a clearing right where the stand was; my father would mow around there. I saw a little man. He was about my size. He had on buckskin clothing and everything was jagged, like jaggedy finishing on the clothing. He had a little knife and a belt, and he stood there looking at me. His hair was like a red rust color, in no particular style, just hanging out of his hat. It was fairly short. But he looked at me and he watched me, and at that point I dropped the bucket. Then he started to walk towards me, real slowly. I was pretty scared, I’m not gonna lie.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that makes sense.
SABRINA: He then smiled, and his smile showed small teeth, almost like baby teeth, and they were pointed. He began to lunge, and as soon as he lunged, my mom or my dad slammed our van door, and he looked up, looked past me, zig-zagged back through the tall grass, and took off. I ran to my parents, I told them what happened. My father looked around a little bit, but he didn’t seem like he didn’t believe me, and that was what really scared me. I almost wish he would’ve thought I was making up tales or whatnot.
But it doesn’t stop there. I had never told anybody about this. When I was 16 years old – I carried this with me. It was really something that affected me because I never wanted to go back to the cabin after that. I did, but I never strayed from my parents. Well, at about 16, I was talking paranormal, ghosts, all sorts of things with a friend, and this friend spoke German, he spoke Latin. He was completely out of place where we grew up. He listened to classical music. He was self-taught on the piano.
He asked me to come over one day, and I went to his house. He had bunches of books. I can only describe them as tomes, very ancient, old-looking books. His room was done up like an 85-year-old man’s room. That’s the only way I can describe it. It wasn’t a 16-year-old kid’s room. Really out of place. He was odd to begin with. Not in a bad way, but there was always a really weird –
JIM HAROLD: He was different.
SABRINA: Yeah, a completely different energy about him, almost like an old soul. He had asked me about what happened to me because he knew something had happened, because I had said I was afraid of the woods. He pulled out a couple books and he said they were his grandmother’s. One of them was really old, and it had a lot of drawings in it. He said that the drawings were in the book and his grandmother added some. He flips some pages and all of a sudden he turns the book around and shows me – he was about 98% on the mark of what I saw in the woods.
JIM HAROLD: Oh man.
SABRINA: Yeah. I’m icy cold right now just thinking about it. He translated the text, and the name said “Seanrue” [sp]. It was in Gaelic. Side point, I’ve looked this name up; I found it once, only when the internet kind of began, way early in the ’90s. The website I found it on was gone. I can’t find it again. But back to the story, he asked if we wanted to try to contact him. I was half afraid and half curious because I wanted to know, why me, and why so many paranormal things happened to me after I saw him.
So my friend set up the Ouija board. We had another friend with us. She really didn’t say much, but she believed a lot in the same things we did. So we set the board up, and my friend was very particular that no hands ever touch the board. He took this really old-looking Ouija board out of his storage area and set it on the table, and he said, “Just start asking questions.” So I did. The first question I asked is if I’d see him again. The planchette moved on its own – which again, now, it freaks me out, but back then I just thought it was cool and amazing and something I was used to around this friend. It said “yes.” I asked why, and it spelled out “Child.” Then I asked the reason I saw him, and he said, “Hungry.” Then he said his name. He spelled it out. It looked like gibberish to me, but my friend said it matched what was in his grandmother’s book.
The weird thing is, the story that was in his grandmother’s book said that this particular – it was Irish folklore. That’s all that it was listed as in the book. He would steal the children of workers in the fields, because long ago, there wasn’t childcare, there was no school. The kids came with the moms and dads where they had to work. So the kids would keep busy, and Seanrue [sp] would steal them and take them. From my memory of the quick look in the book, he had a cave or a mine where he kept the souls of the children to work for him, but he ate their bodies.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my. Do you remember how to spell that?
SABRINA: I don’t. I looked up phonetically, “shawn roo,” which sounds almost French to me. But I’ve spoken to a couple people in the paranormal world, and they said that that instance, it happened for a reason. They couldn’t tell me why, but most people don’t encounter folklore. They don’t encounter Fae or spirits. But for some reason I was picked out. As I mentioned, after that I had a lot of other paranormal issues. I could see auras. I could see my siblings and my parents sleep in the middle of the night in a black room. I’ve seen ghosts.
JIM HAROLD: Wow. That seemed to ignite your sensitivity, it sounds like.
SABRINA: It did, and it’s something, since I’ve had children, I’ve dampened. I won’t let it come back out because I always felt like it was a door, and once you open that door, you could let anything in. But it really affected me, seeing him.
JIM HAROLD: Well, I hope that whoever is out there listening, if you’ve heard of the Seanrue [sp] – we’re not sure how to spell it, but if you’ve heard of that, please let us know. You can contact me at jimharold.com, at the website, the Contact tab. You can put it on the Virtual Facebook Group. If you’ve heard of this Seanrue [sp], I’d be very interested. Sabrina, what an interesting story. And always great to connect with a fellow Northeastern Ohioan, even if you’re not here anymore. You can leave this area, but I’m sure there’s a big piece of this area still in your heart. Thank you so much for being a part of the show today.
SABRINA: Thank you, Jim. Stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Grammarly, and I love Grammarly. I’ve been using it for years, way before they advertised on the show. Their latest feature is one of their most magnificent: their Premium Advanced Tone Suggestions. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of times when I was in a situation where I dashed off an email real quickly, thought I was clear about what I was saying, and then it was taken totally wrong.
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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: Danette is on the line from Montreal. Found us, like many people did, during the pandemic. She’s going to take us back to her university years and tell us about something rather strange that happened. Danette, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.
DANETTE: Thank you very much. I was about 18 or 19. It was a long time ago, and I lived in a very shady part of town because it was very cheap rent. It was quite far away from the university that I was attending, and yeah, it was a place that – I have to describe it a little bit just so you understand what the story is.
On the ground floor there was a pharmacy, and on the second floor there was a medical clinic, and then on the third floor were a couple of very small, very cheap apartments. There was the front door, which was a big glass, heavy door, and then there were the mailboxes and then there was another door, and then you walked up those three flights and then there was another door that you needed to unlock, and then there were the apartment doors. There were basically three big doors between me and my apartment door. I had come from a small town where no one ever locked their doors, so by the time I got through those three doors, I would very rarely even remember to lock my own door.
This one night in particular, I had come back from school. I had been working on a paper in the library. It took about an hour to get back home, so this was quite late. It was probably like 12:30 at night, and I was exhausted, so I went straight into the bathroom and I was getting ready for bed. I was washing my face, and all of a sudden I heard a voice behind me. Audible, not a voice in my head. A voice right behind me, a woman’s voice, very calmly saying, “Go lock your door.”
I’ve thought about this moment so many times since then. Rather than freaking out or panicking or wondering what the hell just happened, I was almost in a trance. I had soap on my face, and I walked immediately to my door, which was probably about 20 feet away. There was a peephole in the door, and I could see that there was a man just about to come in. I turned the deadbolt, and then my heart went through the floor and back up into my chest. And then he knocked. He heard the deadbolt go. He knocked on the door.
I said, “Who is it?” He said, “Oh, my friend so-and-so told me to come and meet him here.” It was all completely fabricated. I lived alone, and I knew my neighbor, and the other two apartments were not occupied at the time. I don’t even know where I found the strength to start yelling – I yelled at him and I said, “Get the” – many curse words – “hell out of here. I’m calling 911 right away.” And he walked away. He was just like, “Oh, whoa, whoa.” I was like, “Please, get the hell out of here because I’m calling 911.” Which I did.
As I think I said to you before, they were absolutely no help at all. Basically scolded me for not having locked my own door. But yeah, this voice, this audible voice, told me to go and lock my door. And if I had not immediately obeyed, I think –
JIM HAROLD: He would’ve been in and God knows what would’ve happened.
DANETTE: That’s right. He would’ve been in for sure, and at best I would’ve been robbed. At worst, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I don’t even know how he got in. That’s the thing that always makes me – when I think about it, I have no idea how the man could – I mean, he must’ve had a key. He must’ve been maybe a previous tenant. But he was obviously watching me because he appeared a few minutes after I arrived.
JIM HAROLD: Terrible. Now, let me ask you this – the voice. Was the voice familiar in any way to you?
DANETTE: I wish I had a recording of that voice. It was a woman’s voice.
JIM HAROLD: It was a long time ago.
DANETTE: It was a long time ago, and it was a woman’s voice, and it was audible. I think I also mentioned, my husband had an aunt who was a psychologist, and I remember telling her this story and she thought that it might be the bicameral mind. But then when I researched the bicameral mind a little bit before I came on, I thought that can’t possibly be. I think she was really looking for a solution that could be that wasn’t anything paranormal. As a psychologist, she thought in those kinds of terms.
JIM HAROLD: Right, she wanted to find the logical explanation. I will throw one other thing that’s kind of similar, but also I don’t think the psychologist would go for it. I’m not saying this is it, but just another thing to think about. Maybe three or four months ago, I did an interview with a gentleman by the name of Anthony Peake. This was on the Paranormal Podcast; everybody check it out if you haven’t had a chance. His theory is that there is reincarnation, but we’re reincarnated by ourselves, and there’s two different types of our being, and one is called I believe the Eidolon, he calls it.
The idea is that when you hear that voice to turn this way and not that way, that is the Eidolon telling you based on their past experience and guiding you in certain ways. His thesis is you keep living this life over and over, and you’ve got this voice – in this case it could’ve been actually physically audible – it could’ve been you telling yourself to lock that door because maybe in a past life you didn’t lock it.
DANETTE: I have thought of that.
JIM HAROLD: That is an out-there theory. Again, I think it could’ve been a loved one, it could’ve been a “guardian angel.” I think there’s a lot of different explanations. But the minute you said that, I thought of Anthony Peake’s theory. I think his most recent book is called Cheating the Ferryman.
DANETTE: I’m going to look that up.
JIM HAROLD: It’s something that does make you think. Do you think it also could’ve been maybe a passed loved one or something like that?
DANETTE: I think all of these amazing and compelling theories that we have about guardian angels and guides and all of that is so compelling and it’s so interesting. I have no idea, and I don’t think any of us do, what it is, but I definitely have felt in my life many presences, many people – when you decide you’re going to light a bunch of candles and two seconds later the power goes out. I have had those kinds of impulses like “turn left” instead of turning right and that kind of thing. Nothing happens, but then I wonder afterwards, what would’ve happened had I turned right as opposed to left?
But in this particular instance, it’s the only time in my life that it was an audible voice. It was not in my head. It was from I would say right behind me, like right here, someone who was right there. Was it my higher self? The idea that it would’ve been me, my own voice – it could’ve been my own voice. I don’t know. It could’ve been my own voice from the future.
JIM HAROLD: Absolutely. I will tell you, Danette, what a great, great story. Thank goodness everything was okay. Listen to that little voice, everybody, and lock your doors. Danette, thank you again for being a part of the Campfire.
DANETTE: Thank you so much, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Oh, we have a return caller and I’m so glad because a lot of times I’ll ask people for an update – what is new and what is going on with their story? And we don’t get too many of those. I understand. People get busy or maybe nothing else happens. Well, we have a situation where Leah is on the phone from New York City, and she told a story a few years ago about a ghost, and now she has an update. We’re so glad to have her on the show. Leah, thank you so much. I appreciate you for taking time. If you could start out with a slight recap of your original story, and we’ll go from there.
LEAH: Sure. Thanks for having me back. A few years ago I told a story about when I was maybe nine or ten. I was staying over at my grandparents’ house, and I was staying in my dad’s old room in the attic. I saw a ghost of a little girl reading a book, and I was definitely awake. I never really told anyone about that until when I called in to this show.
Then I told my family about it for the first time at a family reunion several years after it happened. I’m just going to call her Mary, even though that’s not her name. At the family reunion, my uncle said, “Oh, that sounds like Mary,” who is my great aunt, my grandma’s older sister. She was an avid reader. She taught speed reading classes at a college. I met her when I was a baby, but I don’t remember because I was so young. I never really thought about that, that it could’ve been here. That was cool, and then my family started telling more stories about their own experiences, and that was that. I was like, “Oh cool, sounds like it was Mary.”
Then last year three of my grandparents passed away, and in September, at my grandma’s funeral, my mom had asked her niece about growing up with them. I learned there that there was actually another sibling that my grandma and her sister had who died when she was younger. So it was Mary and then this other child who died when she was a baby and then my grandma. My grandma was the youngest, and my grandma never met this other child because she died before my grandma was born. I was like, oh, maybe it was her.
We didn’t talk about it long at the memorial, but later I was emailing my cousin, asking more about what it was like – I can’t remember if I told her why I was so curious or if she remembered that I had this experience, but it turns out my grandma and Mary’s mother was – this was the very early 1900s, and she wasn’t a warm and fuzzy mom. She had Mary look after her little sister, even though Mary was only six. Apparently one time the younger sister – she was okay, but she fell while Mary was supposed to be watching her, and my great-grandma got very mad at her and blamed her for a lot of things like that. It seemed like Mary had to carry that around with her a lot. But that baby did die while she was still a baby. She got sick and passed away.
I think what I experienced was maybe Mary when she was six or seven again, reading, because she liked to read. And I thought maybe she was visiting me because I was another young girl staying in the house, and she felt like she had to watch me and take care of me.
JIM HAROLD: Ah, interesting.
LEAH: I think she was made to feel like she dropped the ball on watching her little sister.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my. I love that because so many times – and again, I’m not casting aspersions to our storytellers; I really appreciate all of our storytellers, but I love when someone says, “This happened to me. Let me look for opportunities through the years to try to make sense of this and track this down,” and I absolutely love that you did that. Does that make you feel better about the experience, or do you feel like “boy, that’s kind of cool” and it pleases you in some way?
LEAH: Yeah. On one hand, I think she might’ve been watching over me, but I also remember she wasn’t really looking at me; she was just reading. So I don’t know what it was. [laughs] But I hope that if that’s what she was doing, she got some closure and isn’t stuck there feeling guilty or anything. I don’t remember meeting her, so I think that’s cool too, that I got to be with her.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah. I think sometimes it’s interesting – there’s a show on PBS about finding your roots. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called, but generally the idea of the show is people who get with a genealogist – most of the time it’s famous people – and they trace back. I think sometimes we tend to forget that we are a product of everyone who went before us, and there are some really interesting people in those family trees that have stories just like we do. I think that’s a neat way to connect.
LEAH: Yeah.
JIM HAROLD: Indeed. Leah, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming back on the Campfire. I appreciate it very much, and stay spooky!
LEAH: Thank you. Stay spooky.
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Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our Virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Next up is Christine from Story Worthy. We’ve been doing this fun section where we talk to different great podcasters about their own supernatural stories. In this case, Christine has a family story, and she’ll tell us about Story Worthy at the end of the call. But first we want to get this great story. Christine, welcome to the Campfire and tell us this family story.
CHRISTINE: Hi, Jim. This is great. I’m so happy to be on your show. My sister lived in an old house in Springfield, Pennsylvania, which is outside of Pittsburgh. It’s probably a house from the ’20s or ’30s. One day, my sister and her husband, the refrigerator stopped working. They’re trying to find the warranty, because the refrigerator was only bought a couple years before, so they knew they could return it or whatever. They’re trying to find the warranty and they look all over the house, through all their paperwork, all their everything.
All of a sudden, there’s a loud bang in the basement. My sister goes down the basement steps – and this is one of those old basements with a cement floor. In Pittsburgh, there’s sometimes a toilet in the corner of the room. It’s called a Pittsburgh toilet. But anyway, my sister goes down to this dark, kind of dank basement, and one of her paintings which was on the wall – it was an older painting; it was just hung up there, not really for display, but just something to get it off the ground – this huge painting had fallen to the ground, and on the wall where the huge painting was hung, sticking on the nail, was the warranty for the refrigerator.
JIM HAROLD: Huh. Whoa. How weird is that?
CHRISTINE: And it made its presence right when my sister was looking for it. It was on her mind, “I need to find this warranty, I’ve got to get this refrigerator repaired,” and then all of a sudden the crash in the basement, and it’s hanging on the wall behind the old painting.
JIM HAROLD: That’s a great story. Now let me ask you, do you think that is (a) she manifested that, the power of her energy of thinking that made that happen? Or (b), do you think there was some kind of supernatural intervening force that made that happen for her, like a guardian angel or someone who’s passed or something?
CHRISTINE: I think somebody who lived in the house before her that is still around. My sister would often say that she’d be in the kitchen, and she’d turn to get the dish towel, and it would get automatically thrown through the air to her. Nobody’s in the room, and somebody throws her the dish towel. And that happened three, four, five times. So I think there was a presence in the house – maybe still is – and I think they led her to the warranty. Why it was in the basement, nobody would ever understand.
JIM HAROLD: In other words, it’s kind of a helpful ghost.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. I don’t think it’s a mean ghost. I think it’s a ghost who is pleasant, but maybe for some reason didn’t go to the other side.
JIM HAROLD: That’s a great story. I love that. Christine, you may or may not know this, but that story is kind of the epitome of my favorite kind of story, which I call a headscratcher. It doesn’t fall into a classic ghost story or a haunting or anything like that. It’s one of those things that’s in between categories, and they are absolutely my favorites, the listeners will know. Thank you for sharing that. I absolutely love it. And again, these are the kinds of stories that make me really believe in all this because just average people are experiencing really weird things.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, that happened. It’s not like she made that up. Why would my sister make up something so benign or whatever? It happened. So that’s it. It happened. I love it.
JIM HAROLD: Well, something else that happened is you’ve had a very successful podcast for years called Story Worthy. Tell us what Story Worthy is, if folks haven’t heard it – I’m sure many of our people have, but for the ones that haven’t – and also where they can find it. Give us a minute or two on it.
CHRISTINE: Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it. I started Story Worthy back in 2010, and the impetus for starting the story was live storytelling that I used to go see. It was called The Moth. The Moth is still around, actually. Anybody gets up, tells a true five-minute story, and then they’re off the stage. But when people would finish their story, I was always in the audience saying, “And then what? But no, then what?” And then I’m chasing them after the show. They’re going to their car and I’m like, “Yeah, but then what did he say?” I wanted to know more.
So the idea of Story Worthy is that people come on the show and they tell a true 10-minute story, and then I’m able to ask the questions that maybe the audience is thinking about and fill in some of the gaps. I generally have on comedians because I’m a comedian myself, and I really think comedians understand brevity, so they tell these short, snappy stories, and we chat about it. You learn a little bit about the comedian and then you learn a little bit about the topic. I’m very proud of the show. You can listen to Story Worthy anywhere you hear your podcasts, and also you can find Story Worthy at the website, storyworthypodcast.com.
JIM HAROLD: Well, everybody, it is a great podcast. Be sure to check out Story Worthy with Christine. Christine, thank you so much for being a part of the show. Really appreciate it.
CHRISTINE: Thanks, Jim. Keep it up.
JIM HAROLD: Libby is on the line from St. Louis, Missouri, and we’re so glad to have her here. Her friend Annemarie, who is the subject of this story, told her about the show, I guess eight years ago. So Libby’s been listening ever since. We really appreciate it. Well, you be the judge: doppelganger or time slip, or something else? Libby, welcome to the show and thank you so much. And a spooky shoutout to Annemarie. Thank you again.
LIBBY: Thank you, Jim, for having me. It’s great to be here. I’m just going to do a short background. This is about my friend Annemarie. We’ve known each other our whole lives. We go way back. We’ve been extremely close. I consider her a sister. This story, I was running some errands around my hometown, and I was done, I was going to head home. I’m on this very busy main road, and I’m heading to this intersection of another main road. I stop at the stoplight. I’m the very front car. I see, from the corner of my eye, my best friend Annemarie in her very distinctive Toyota Corolla. She’s about to turn left from the perpendicular road that crosses the road I’m on, and she’s going to go right in front of me and turn down the way that I just came on that road, if that makes sense.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah.
LIBBY: Okay, great. Immediately I’m trying to get her attention to see what she’s doing, wave, as you do. She’s not seeing me, but I see her, I get a really good look at her. She looks happy. She doesn’t look weird in any way. She’s just grooving to her music, which is very typical of her. I can see every detail of her car. I see the things hanging from her rearview mirror, one of the things I bought her. Then as she passes, I’m still trying to get her attention, and I see the dent in her bumper, I see all of her bumper stickers and her window stickers. She’s still not seeing me.
I ring her up real quick, I give her a call, and I say, “What are you doing? Do you want to hang out? Do you want to run errands?” We were in high school at the time. Things that girls do. She tells me that she’s not anywhere near where I am; she’s about 20 minutes away. She’s volunteering the whole day, so that wasn’t her. I immediately assume she’s pulling my leg, she’s fibbing for some reason, and I tell her, “You don’t need to lie to me. If you’re busy, if you’re doing something else, that’s fine.”
She’s very adamant, “No, you can go ahead and track me, and you’ll see I’m 20 minutes away.” We shared locations on our phones at the time, so I did exactly that because I saw her and I didn’t believe her at all. Sure enough, she’s telling the truth. She’s 20 minutes away. I called her back and I was like, “Okay, then who did I just see?” It was very weird. We were both very – not freaked out by it, but very puzzled. She immediately was like, “This might be a Jim Harold story.” This was six years ago or so, so obviously I didn’t write in at the time. I did write it on your Facebook page, and a lot of people gave some interesting feedback, like doppelganger or time slip. I really like the time slip idea. I think it was a time slip.
JIM HAROLD: I’ve got to be honest with you – and I say this so much, I feel like what we used to call back in the day “a broken record,” but I think the nature of reality is so much different than we take for granted and we feel, and these kinds of things are possible. The thing that resonated with me and struck me when you were describing what happened is the fact you saw something you had purchased for her as a gift.
We’ve all seen cars and stuff and we thought it was someone we knew but it wasn’t really them, but this was so specific, and you saw things that – it would be one thing – I think you said it was a Toyota. Let’s say it’s a Toyota Corolla or whatever it is. It might be one thing to see one of the same color, but to see a person with similar physical attributes and the thing that you bought for them – that would be too much of a coincidence to even be plausible. So you must’ve seen her. That brings up that question, what was it? Was it a doppelganger with a doppelganger car? And we have had that, by the way. We’ve had people say “Somebody pulled in in a van,” I think it was, “and I thought it was my mom, and then it wasn’t.” So this does happen, and I do think a time slip is as good an explanation as any.
LIBBY: Yes, that story that you just mentioned is actually why I submitted this story. I was like, you know what? I’m doing it. [laughs] It’s so similar.
JIM HAROLD: Absolutely. That is a great story, Libby. We thank you, and we thank Annemarie. Thank you for sharing the story. If you ever figure it out, please do let us know. And to both of you, stay spooky!
LIBBY: Thank you so much, Jim. You stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: Happy spring, everybody! Spring is springing, believe it or not, and it can’t come soon enough. As I’m sure you’re going to be out and about, you’re going to get out in the great outdoors again and start doing things, I’m sure you’re going to be in need of some audio entertainment. Now, of course, we have our free shows, but we also have our Paranormal Plus Club, and I would highly recommend that you check it out.
Basically, the Paranormal Plus Club is where you can go and get all of the archives going back to 2005. That includes a few hundred Campfires no longer on the free feeds. That includes several hundred editions of the Paranormal Podcast not on the free feeds. That includes hundreds of Plus shows that people don’t realize that we do each and every month. We do eight exclusive episodes for our Plus members. There are shows like UFO Encounters, Ghost Insight, The Cryptid Report, the list goes on. The Other Side. The thing is, people don’t know that we do all these extra shows. Even the members, I have to remind them from time to time. If you’re listening to this and you’re a member, make sure that you’re checking out those shows because those are part of your membership.
All told, it’s well over 2,000 episodes that you can’t get if you’re on the free feeds, so what are you waiting for? Go over to jimharoldplus.com and click on the banner with my face. It’ll take you to a page where it explains the Plus Club. There’s two different versions; there’s our classic Libsyn version where you have an app that you install on your device and you can listen on Apple devices, you can listen via Android devices, you can listen via Amazon device, you can listen via your computer. That’s for people who are like, “Hey, I want to be able to change from device to device, ecosystem to ecosystem. I want to be able to operate in any environment and listen to my Plus Club content.” And that’s great. They’ve been with us for years. They do a great job, and people love that Spooky Studio app.
This last year, we added another version, and it’s just as great. It’s like chocolate and vanilla, which one do you prefer. It’s the Apple Podcast version. If you tell me, “Jim, I’m not interested in a lot of different devices. I am an Apple device person and that’s all I want to listen on, and I listen in Apple Podcasts,” then I say the Apple Podcast version is for you. Now, with both systems you get a great deal. There are great discounts for the Libsyn version where you can get great discounts on monthly and yearly membership, and on Apple, they do something a little different. You can get a free trial, which is something Libsyn doesn’t do.
So each system has its own pluses. It’s just up to you to figure out which one you prefer. But the good news is, you get all those Campfires, you get all those Paranormal Podcasts on both versions, you get shows like UFO Encounters, Ghost Insight, The Other Side, The Cryptid Report – that Plus content, you get it on both systems. Get it today. Don’t delay. Go to jimharoldplus.com. That’s jimharoldplus.com. Make sure to click on the banner with my face on it at jimharoldplus.com. And thanks!
You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Ryan is on the line from Southern California. Really a fascinating listener and caller to the Campfire. He’s had great stories over the years. This time he has a work story. Good to speak with him – and he’s always been so kind; he sent me a Look magazine one time that pertained to one of his stories, and I still have that. It had Jackie Gleason and Art Carney on it. It dated from the ’50s. Very cool stuff. I love that retro stuff. So thank you for the magazine, Ryan, and thank you very much for being on the show again. You always have such interesting stories. Can’t wait to hear this work story. Tell us what happened.
RYAN: Hopefully it won’t disappoint you. It’s actually two stories, but at the same location. A few years ago, I worked at a prison down here in Southern California for the State of California. I specifically worked in IT. It was a new branch in IT; it was actually the medical side, so it was separated from the custody side. We were installing new equipment. We were doing our own thing.
I think I was only there for like a month or so and I got a call from a nurse’s station out in the farthest building on this property. This property is huge. It’s like 135 acres. The prison itself was built in 1952, I believe, so it’s not quite 100 years old. But there’s been 16 confirmed Death Row executions there at this prison, and there’s been I believe over 125 suicides and violent deaths and starvation. All manner of violence and just sadness with these deaths, so you can imagine the range of emotions that is going through this place.
I got a call from the nurse’s station that their computer is glitchy. It was an area that I had not visited before. I was not familiar with it all. So I went out there and I was asking her, “What’s going on?” She said, “Sometimes the computer freezes, sometimes the monitor will just fizzle out and do weird things.” So I’m working on it. Where we were, it was a cell that was converted to a medical station where they pass out medication. The front part of it’s sealed off, and it’s a door, but everything else was like a jail cell. You can look out and see all the other cells in there. It was a small area. I think there were about eight other cells going on.
So I’m working on this computer, and the nurse was just sitting there. She was done passing out medication. We were just chit-chatting and we heard a noise coming from the other empty cells. This is completely locked off from any of the other inmates, so nobody was in there. I was like, “Oh, what was that?” She’s like, “Oh, this happens all the time. It’s okay.” Then I notice that the computer started acting funny. The monitor was going out. It was getting all fizzly and crackly. I’d never quite seen anything like that on a computer screen. It kind of reminds me of when you’re watching a TV station with the old antennas and the signal wasn’t as strong.
Then all of a sudden, all of these cells, their doors just swing open. We’re talking eight of them all at once. I jumped up out of my seat. I’m like, “Oh my goodness!” The nurse is like, “This happens all the time.” We go in there and check it out, and there’s no power to these other cells. There was no master button that opens them up all at once, like you’ve seen in the movies or Alcatraz. You have to individually open up these cells to get them to open. But they all opened at one time. I was just in shock. I asked her, “What is this area? It’s different from the rest of the prison.” She says, “Oh, this was Death Row. This is where they kept all the inmates before they died, and right through that room is where they had the injection site where they sat.” I’m like, oh my gosh, I was in Death Row and I didn’t even know it. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness.
RYAN: It made me jump a bit and stuff, but I’d never experienced anything quite like that, where everything opened at once. And these doors – I was messing around in there for probably about another 30 minutes, trying to get these doors to open on their own. There were no breezes in there that could open these heavy cell doors. They all opened up at once.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
RYAN: I asked around after that, and all kinds of crazy stuff happens in that area. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the computer, so I think it’s just whatever’s going on in there is affecting that computer also, because I switched it out and it was still doing the same thing.
JIM HAROLD: So you think all these deaths and horrible things impacted the place and messed with the technology, essentially?
RYAN: I believe so. Especially that specific place, because that area – those people that were there knew they were going to die, and they had some sort of violent crime associated with them. Just the feeling in there, and the atmosphere around it, was just so heavy and dark. I really believe that those people that were there – it’s lingered. That effect is still lingering. I don’t know that it was intelligent. It could’ve been something like a historical tape being played over again. But it was definitely an experience that left me in awe of what’s possible out there.
JIM HAROLD: And I know you had another short story for us, Ryan. Tell us what that one is.
RYAN: This one is a little bit more interesting. I was there working at this prison for about a year now, and once again we were having some electronic issues. It was at a location of the prison. It was under the housing unit of where all the inmates were. We were having some issues with one of our networking equipment. My boss and I had to go down there and replace it. It’s not anywhere that you can really access; there’s two entrances in this lower level of this building, and you have to have four different sets of keys to get in there, like the heavy-duty keys that you need. So we had to go and get special permission and get these keys.
We go underneath this building, and it’s pretty much a basement. We open up these two heavy doors and go in there, and it is just pitch black. There is no light in there whatsoever. We tried the light switch and nothing happened, so we had to use essentially the lights from our phones to guide us to this room. We closed the door behind us and locked it because that’s just standard protocol at a prison, because you don’t want anybody to follow you in there or getting in there behind us. Also, we were the only other people that had this set of keys. Nobody else could get in there.
This area is huge, by the way. It’d probably be about 5,000 square feet, and it is just empty. There was nothing in there. We saw some other side doors around there, but it was a very creepy atmosphere, so we didn’t want to go exploring. My boss and I go into this little side room, and it’s like a closet, and that’s where all of our networking equipment is. We pretty much finished up what we were supposed to do, replacing this hardware, and then we started hearing footsteps.
My boss is like, “Do you hear that?” I’m like, “Yeah, I do hear that.” We drop what we’re doing, we go out there, and we’re looking around. There’s nobody there. Once again, there’s nobody there. We have the keys. Nobody could get in there. But just in case, our standard protocol is we’re supposed to look. So we start looking around. We tried these other side rooms; there was nobody in there. It’s just pitch black. There are boxes everywhere in these other rooms and it’s hard to see, but we had to investigate.
There were these double doors that we went through, and they were locked, but we unlocked it, just to be safe, just to say that we cleared everything. We go into this room, and it is so dark in there. It felt like our lights were having a hard time penetrating the darkness in there. We start hearing these footsteps again, inside this room. We’re looking everywhere, just baffled. My boss was getting really, really scared. He’s like, “Hey, let’s get out of here.” My heart was accelerating, but I’ve been in some situations like this. I go out and investigate hauntings all the time.
So we’re looking around and we’re following these footsteps deeper and deeper into this room until we come against a wall, and we notice it’s all these little doors attached to the walls. Then all of a sudden, we realize where we were. We were inside the morgue of the prison. [laughs] We realized that these little doors is where they actually stored the bodies. My boss freaks out. He gives a little yelp and he jets out of there. But he comes against these double doors, and it’s locked again. He’s shaking the door, freaking out. I come up behind him – I’m shaken up, too
Then we hear the footsteps running behind us. So I’m getting the key out, fumbling, trying to find what key it is to open up these doors, and he’s screaming. He’s like, “Somebody’s coming, hurry, hurry, hurry!” I finally got the right key, we come through. We didn’t lock the door behind us, by the way. It somehow locked itself again. Even though I unlocked it, we could not get these doors open, and we’re both pushing our bodies against it. We could not get these doors open, and the footsteps felt like they were right in front of us, and then walked right through us, and the door popped open.
All of our weight was against it, so we fell down onto the floor, and my boss is screaming. After that, we had to call officers just to tell them what happened, just to make sure. We get probably about eight other officers down there; we could not find anything. There was nobody there, there was no explanation for the footsteps. They couldn’t find anything wrong with the door. It should not have gotten stuck because once you unlock it, it’s pretty easy to open. We could not find what was wrong, what happened, and there was no explanation. It was just one of those intense situations that I will always remember.
Actually, I talked to my former boas just about a week ago because I knew I was coming on, just going over the story with him, and it was exactly how I remembered. He says he still has nightmares about it. Shortly after that, he transferred to a different area because it shook him up so much.
JIM HAROLD: I do not blame him, Ryan, I do not blame him. Fascinating stories. And again, a place like that must be full of energy. No telling what you might see. Thanks for sharing your story on the show today.
RYAN: No problem. Always happy to share.
JIM HAROLD: Christopher is on the line from Chicago. We’re so glad to speak with him again. I believe this is his third call on the show. Sometimes you just have a feeling about something, and Christopher had one of those feelings – and he’s going to tell us about it. Christopher, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.
CHRISTOPHER: Thank you. This was around 10 years ago. I was a senior in high school. At the time, I was really interested in the show Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. Watched that show religiously. At the time, my dad was living in Las Vegas for work. We visited Las Vegas maybe two or three times a month to visit my dad. We were planning on a trip to go visit him in Las Vegas. Before the trip, I had the strongest feeling that I would meet one of the members of the Ghost Adventures crew. I had that feeling come over and over again, I disregarded that feeling because I thought it was Philly, and why would I have that type of feeling that I would meet this person out of all of the millions of people in Las Vegas?
So I go to Las Vegas for a few days, no sign of anyone from that show. I thought, “Yeah, that was just a silly feeling.” Last day of that trip to Las Vegas, I go out to a sushi restaurant with my family. I love the restaurant, sit in the car waiting for my family. I see someone walk by the car and I thought, “They really look like one of the members from Ghost Adventures.” I thought, “Maybe I’m just thinking this because of confirmation bias. I was thinking about it over and over.” Leave the car, and there was the person from the show. I said, “Hey, you look like so-and-so from the Ghost Adventures crew,” and he said, “Dude, I am the guy from Ghost Adventures!”
So yeah, somehow I had some type of feeling or hint and it came true. We took a picture together. I even posted the picture on the Campfire Facebook group.
JIM HAROLD: Do you think it was just you had a premonition? Or do you think somehow you made it happen in some way?
CHRISTOPHER: I think it was a premonition. I don’t think I made it happen. And I was thinking about the reasons why I would have such a premonition. Why would I be prepared to meet someone for a quick five-second photo – it sounds silly, but I really think for whatever reason, having that premonition really helped me to prepare to accept other premonitions in the future, if that makes sense.
JIM HAROLD: Sure. It’s kind of like laying the groundwork for what was going to come up in the future.
CHRISTOPHER: Absolutely.
JIM HAROLD: I do believe we have the ability to foretell future events. Doesn’t mean we’re 100%, and sometimes you get a hunch about something and it doesn’t happen, but in general I do think somehow – and I don’t know how the mechanisms works, but I do believe it’s a thing. I think it’s something, Christopher, we certainly can access.
CHRISTOPHER: Absolutely. I do have one other quick coincidence, if that’s okay for me to share. It’ll be quick.
JIM HAROLD: Go ahead.
CHRISTOPHER: This last Christmas season, I was really missing my grandma a lot, who died a couple years ago. I missed her a lot. I was thinking about when I would visit my grandma as a kid during Christmastime. A song that really reminds me of my grandma is “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney. It’s my favorite Christmas song of all time.
One day I was really, really missing my grandma; that song was stuck in my head over and over again. But I didn’t listen to the song because I didn’t want to miss my grandma even more. Finally I gave in and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to see if I can find the ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ single on vinyl.” And right as I opened up my computer to search for that song on vinyl on the internet, my Spotify account – which I never, ever use – pops up and it starts playing “Wonderful Christmastime.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] I like that. That’s pretty cool. Again, if physical items can be impacted by our loved ones, why can’t some electrons, or why can’t a computer chip or whatever it might be? That’s an awesome story. I love that. That’s very cool, and I think that was your grandma saying hi. Did you ever find it on vinyl?
CHRISTOPHER: I did. I ordered a copy on eBay and it came safely in the mail. I listen to that vinyl still whenever I think about my grandma.
JIM HAROLD: Very cool. Christopher, thanks for being a part of the Campfire.
CHRISTOPHER: Thank you, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Well, the calls from Canada keep coming. Today during our recording session – they may or may not all be on this episode – we had three callers from Canada. Maybe it’s Therese who’s sparking a Campfire revolution up in Canada, but Therese is on the line from Nova Scotia. We’re so glad to have her. She has a story about her mom. Therese, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.
THERESE: Hey, thank you, Jim. The story that I really want to share today is a summary of the really interesting set of events surrounding my mom’s passing in September 2021. Just a trigger warning, this will probably hit home to some people, but that’s why I also want to share it, okay?
JIM HAROLD: And I’m sorry for your loss.
THERESE: Yeah, thank you. But really, upon reflection of all these events leading up to my mom’s passing, I realized that there was a lot of things that happened in the days before her passing that really made me feel that it was her time and provided me with a lot of closure. So I also want to share that it’s important to reflect on these to help us through the grieving process. So here’s my story.
First, my mom had called me on the Monday night saying that she wasn’t feeling very well. She’d had a really bad migraine since the previous Friday. Then she told me that the next day she was going to the hospital with my sister, as she conveniently had a doctor’s appointment. So my mom hitched a ride to the hospital with my sister the next morning.
Then, around noon the next day – this would be Tuesday – my sister called me. She was pretty frantic and she was crying, and then she told me that she was taking Mom back to the hospital, as she was seemingly having a stroke. You know, the stroke-like symptoms. My sister noticed this just a few minutes before she was about to drop my mom off at her house and would’ve then left her home alone with nobody there to see what was going on.
When my sister called, I immediately got into my car and I headed towards them, where they were going. At this point I was about a 30- to 45-minute drive away. When driving to get there, my friend, who was driving – because I was pretty upset, and I was with my friend that day; I asked him to drive – he wound up, even though we knew the area very well, taking the wrong turn. So we ended up on the back rural roads going to this town instead of on the Trans-Canada Highway. But we decided, “We’re not going to waste any time. We’re still going in that direction, it’s all good.”
Then about 20 minutes or so later, my sister called me back saying that they were sending my mom to Yarmouth, but that she couldn’t follow along because her kiddo was coming home from school in a couple hours and she didn’t have childcare because my mom was childcare. Then I told my sister not to worry and that in fact, I was already in Yarmouth. It’s pretty important to note here that Yarmouth is about three hours away from where I live, and because of its location, I’m hardly ever there. It’s just way out of the way for me to go to. But I just happened to be supporting my friend at an appointment that day in Yarmouth. So that was pretty crazy.
Then finally we arrived to the hospital – because again, we were probably about 15 minutes away from the hospital at this point – and found out that my mom’s ambulance was stuck on the Trans-Canada Highway in a traffic jam due to a bad car accident. It was probably a very good thing that we made that wrong turn and went on the back road because turning around on the highway would’ve been pretty challenging, probably, due to this accident. And who knows if we’d have been on the other side of the accident and then trying to turn back around. It was very serendipitous, almost, in a way. Very coincidental.
Then finally, my mom arrived about an hour later at the hospital because of the traffic jam. When they got her in and stabilized her, I finally got to see her. Of course, she was there mentally, even though she was having a brain rupture. She was cracking jokes. When I first went in, one of the nurses said they were asking her, “Are you allergic to anything?” My mom smiles, looks over and points at me and says, “Ah, no, just to her.” So I knew it was her. Till the end, my mom was cracking jokes.
Then she somehow got into the conversation of what I do for a living. I’m an early interventionist, so I work with littles and their families. I told the nurses, “I just help people with their little gremlins,” and they’re like, “Oh, that’s nice.” Then they went off to treat other patients, and I’m standing there with Mom, holding her hand, consoling her, and just keeping an eye on her, and then for some reason I felt totally compelled to do this.
I gave her a kiss and I whispered in her ear – I might get emotional here, but I said, “It’s okay, Mom. If you want to go be with your other little gremlin, I’ll take care of everyone. Don’t you worry.” She smiled. And just so you know, the other little gremlin I was referring to was my oldest brother, who passed away when he was only two. I never got to meet him, but it was her firstborn.
JIM HAROLD: Aww. Oh my.
THERESE: Yeah. I just was compelled to say it, so I did. She smiled, and then not long after that, I noticed that she was looking around the room – over her right shoulder, her left shoulder, in the corner of the room. There was nobody there, but she was smiling.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness.
THERESE: We were there in the Yarmouth Hospital for about three hours. Finally they airlifted her to the Halifax Infirmary. Halifax is our capital. Yarmouth was a much smaller medical facility, so they were sending her to the neurology department in Halifax to get better medical services. At this point I’m about two and a half to three hours away from where I live, and then Halifax is another hour and a half to two hour drive after that. So I just drove home.
Then, about a half an hour after being home, I got a phone call from the hospital. It was a doctor, and he was calling to ask if I could provide consent for a surgery to try and stop the brain bleed. At this point I asked, “What did Mom say about it?” Then the doctor said, “Actually, she’s kind of surprising me. She’s really lucid at times, and even said that she wanted the surgery but requested that we call you,” meaning me, “to talk about the outcomes.” Of course, I said, “Okay, we’ll talk about them. I’m listening. And make sure Mom’s listening to this as well.”
They went through all the outcomes and I consented, etc. Then they asked Mom if she understood. They’re like, “Lena, do you understand about the surgery?” She couldn’t answer. So then they asked what her name was. She could answer. “What’s your birthday?” She could answer. So obviously there was some working memory stuff going on. Then the doctor asked, “What is this?” And I heard my mom say, “A pen.” They’re like, “That’s correct. What do you do with a pen?” And then Mom answered, “You sign.”
And those were the last words that I ever heard her speak. I’ll backtrack a little; needless to say, I didn’t go to the hospital that night because they were going to do this surgery. She was going to be out. They’re like, “Just get some rest. Come in the morning.” This was like 8:30 at night. Then the next morning, I went to the hospital and the prognosis was just not good. We were given the choice to say “Yes, we’re going to keep her alive” or to take her off life support.
Because of how we knew Mom was, we knew she wouldn’t want to live the kind of life that the best case scenario would be if she’d have survived, so, as a family – at this point I was the only one at the hospital but I got everybody on speaker phone – we collectively, us siblings, there’s four of us, made the decision, “We’re going to take her off life support. That’s no life for her.”
So we made that choice. One sibling lives in Toronto, but the two other siblings came up, and we were there. Then the doctor came into the room, and he had a stack of paper. He looks at me and he’s like, “Okay, Therese, sorry to impose on your guys’ meeting, but I need you to sign some papers.”
JIM HAROLD: Oh, interesting. Sign.
THERESE: Right, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I just burst out into tears. I was like, “Mom, okay, I’m listening. I’m signing.” It made it a little bit easier in that way because I’m like, I think she was telling me to sign.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
THERESE: So that’s my story. That’s one. I have other stories, but that’s this story. All those crazy signs.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, wow. That’s tough. There’s so many decisions that we might be called on to make at any time for a loved one, and maybe that guidance – I don’t want to say it’s easy, but I think it makes it more – what is the word I’m looking for?
THERESE: It brought closure.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, brought closure, and makes it more tolerable, I guess is the word.
THERESE: I would agree with that. This was sudden. A stroke, a heart attack, the car accidents, those types of things are very sudden. But to have her last words be to me, “You sign,” even in that moment in the thick of it all, I knew, okay, for some reason – for her to even request that they call me was bizarre. It’s like she needed to tell me that.
JIM HAROLD: Well, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it, and thank you for being a part of the Campfire.
THERESE: Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Well, we made it, and I hope you enjoyed this Campfire as much as I did, and I hope you’ll tune in next week. And make sure to stay tuned for that major announcement on Tuesday, April 11th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
We’re going to do some shoutouts, but first I want to do a big shoutout to all my fellow cruisers. I just came back from the Ancient Mysteries Cruise #6, and that was hosted by Mike and Wendy of Holidaymaker Travel. They always do such a nice job. Just was a pleasure to finally, in person, meet UFO experts Nick Pope and Peter Robbins, who I’ve spoken to and interviewed over the years, and just to meet some great cruisers, some great people, some who were listeners to the shows and some people who frankly never heard of me, but I hope now they’ll tune in. I think some of them will. We just had a great time.
It was interesting because we had some very rough seas coming back, but it was one of those things that it kind of increased the camaraderie, I thought, and it’s a good story to tell. So all in all, time very well spent. Should the folks over there do it again, Holidaymakers Travel, I would definitely suggest checking it out because I think if you’d ask the cruisers, they’d all say that they had a really, really good time. So thank you to them, and thank you Mike and Wendy.
And now we have some special shoutouts for birthdays and such. We’re going to start with Lotus. Lotus emailed me on April 2nd to do a belated birthday shoutout, and I’m glad to do it. Lotus said, “My mother is a huge fan of yours and would love a shoutout on your podcast if possible. She’s a regular listener of your Campfire stories, and for her birthday she was talking about if I could make this possible for her. Her birthday is March 29th and she is turning 40 this year. Can you please make her birthday wish and give her a shoutout?” Well, Lotus, 100% absolutely positively I can. Mitsy, I’m wishing you a big belated happy birthday, and a big stay spooky, and thank you so much for all of your support.
That’s just the start, though. Kelly wrote to us and said, “Hi Jim! My nine-year-old son is a huge fan of your Campfire podcast. It entertains him for hours. He’s turning 10 on April 8th, and one of the things he asked for was a shoutout from you. I don’t know how far in advance you record, but it would mean so much to him if you wished him a happy birthday any time in the month of April. That’s Sawyer, and he is turning 10 on April 8th.” Well, we made it! Sawyer, happy birthday and a big stay spooky!
And last but certainly not least, Amanda wrote and said, “Good morning! My son Logan and I have recently found your podcasts and have been addicted ever since to both. His birthday is coming up on Easter Sunday, April 9th, and he’s going to be 14. Such a sweet, gentle kid who works so hard and does tennis, piano, and Russian. He’s more disciplined than I’ll ever be. Logan was wondering if you could do a little shoutout for him or a personal message to say happy birthday. I know he’d be tickled beyond words.” Well, Amanda, I am tickled beyond words that Logan listens and enjoys the show, and he sounds like a great kid. So Logan, happy birthday and stay spooky!
And if you want your own personal message from me, video message, you can get it very easily. Just go to cameo.com/thejimharold. That’s c-a-m-e-o dot com slash thejimharold. Actually, while I was on the cruise, I put those on pause because I didn’t want people signing up and being disappointed that I couldn’t do them. So those are back open again and requests are starting to come in, I saw this morning. So if you want a personalized video, very inexpensive I might add, greeting from me for your birthday or special occasion, cameo.com/thejimharold.
We thank you so much, and we will talk to you next time. In the meantime, 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.
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