A young woman has an eerie premonition of death, a ghost tourist, a ghost child and much more strangeness on this edition of Campfire!

TRANSCRIPT

What if you sensed a stranger was going to die? Would you tell them? Would you keep quiet? That’s a question you’ll think about after tonight’s Campfire.

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

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. If you’re new here, what we do is share supernatural stories. Could be ghosts, could be cryptid creatures, could be UFOs, could be headscratchers – but whatever they are, they are real, they are true, and they are fascinating. Welcome to our electronic campfire.

If you have been listening for a while, or if you’re brand new, if you like what you hear, take a moment during the episode – you could do it right now if you’re in a safe place to do so – and hit “Follow” or “USbscribe” on the podcast app of your choice. That way you never miss a show, and it helps us a lot, too. It helps us raise in the charts, expose more people to the Campfire love, and then they call in with their stories, and it is a virtuous circle.

Also, on your device, your’e listening, again, you’re at a safe place; you’re like, “I think my friend MILdred would like this.” Hit “Share” and just text them the link in your audio app. That’s such a great idea, a great way to spread the love. I hope that you will do that as well. And let’s get to it. Let’s get to these great Campfire stories.

Elizabeth is on the line from Illinois, and we’re so glad to have her with us. Really, she just has a super remarkable story. I am not going to try to introduce it because it speaks for itself. Elizabeth, I know you just recently found us via Reddit. Thank you, Reddit folks out there. We appreciate it. Love to hear that. You’re joining us today from Illinois. Please tell us your story.

ELIZABETH: Sure. Thanks for having me on. This took place about 15 years ago. I was a freshman in college, and I went very far away for college, probably about 2,000 miles. It was a city that I’d actually never even visited before I went, so I’d never been there before. I didn’t know anybody.

In my first semester, I was in the orchestra. This was probably October of my freshman year, so I’d been there about a month, two months. The orchestra was playing with some soloists. They had had a concerto competition, and if you don’t know what a concerto is, it’s basically a soloist musician stands up in front of the orchestra and plays, and then the orchestra accompanies them.

There were three people, all students, who had won this competition, and we as the orchestra were there to support them in the background. We had a few rehearsals just by ourselves as the orchestra, and then they brought in these soloists to have rehearsals with them. There were two young men, I think, college students, and a young woman.

The wildest thing happened. I had never felt this before, but when I looked at this young woman – she was 21, normal college student, but I felt like she had death around her. And it wasn’t that she was malevolent. She wasn’t evil, she wasn’t hurting anyone. She just looked like she was doomed, like she was marked to die. It was the weirdest thing, and I’ve never felt it since, I’d never felt it before. I’m so glad I’ve never felt it since.

But I had a hard time looking at her, and when you’re part of the orchestra, you’re supposed to be looking at the conductor and the soloist is right next to the conductor. You’re playing and you’re supposed to be looking up a lot, and I remember I couldn’t even look up at her. She scared me. She gave me the heebie-jeebies because it just looked like she had this pallor of death around her.

I was 18 and thinking, “This is kind of crazy. I’ve never had this happen before.” I asked one of my friends, “Does it seem like there’s anything wrong with this woman?” She said, “No, she seems fine.” I said, “Okay.” I remember leaving rehearsals one day and actually calling my mom back home and saying, “This is so weird. I don’t even know what I’m saying, but this girl looks like death. Every time I see her, I can’t even look at her. She just has this aura around her.”

JIM HAROLD: Up to that point, had you ever had that feeling about anybody else?

ELIZABETH: No, never. I don’t discount auras or anything, but I’m not an aura reader. Like everybody, you can get a good or bad feeling about somebody, but this was – like I said several times, I could not look at her. It was so hard to look at her because she just looked like death. I told this to my mom, and my mom didn’t laugh at me or anything, but she said, “You know how they have those dogs who can sniff disease and stuff? Maybe there’s something about her that you’re picking up on. Maybe she’s really sick. Maybe she has cancer. Maybe she has some other sort of illness, and something in you is picking up on that.”

I thought, okay, I guess that makes sense. Afterwards I would look at her and be like, “I’m not really seeing that, but maybe that’s why I feel so uncomfortable. Something about her is just off, and something in me is sensing it.” So we finished the concert, everything was fine. I don’t think I ever saw her again in college at all. I mostly forgot about it. I’d think about it sometimes and be like, “That was really weird, but okay.”

This was probably four years later, and I came across a newspaper article, and there had been a car crash, a drunk driver. The picture was in the paper. It was a picture of the car, and there was a man driving and there was a woman passenger, and there were pictures of the car and then a picture of the man and the woman – nice pictures, not from the crash. They had her senior picture, so she had a dress on, like the studio portrait.

Every hair on my body stood up, because it was the same young woman. So whatever I was picking up on – it was four years late coming, but – and the other thing I think is really weird about that is I don’t really read the local paper. I’ll read international news or domestic news, like most people, scroll the headlines, but I don’t read the local paper. I don’t even know why that crash was in the paper, if it was particularly significant or what. I don’t remember the details; I was just so creeped out that I didn’t save it or anything.

But obviously I was meant to see it. I still wonder how my story and my life’s journey relates to hers, because obviously we were connected in some way.

JIM HAROLD: And you personally ruled out the whole idea that it could be one of the weirdest coincidences ever?

ELIZABETH: I haven’t. It could be one of the weirdest coincidences ever. I don’t know. But I’ve never felt a feeling that strong before, and I haven’t felt it since, thank goodness. I really hope I don’t ever again. But yeah, it absolutely could be a coincidence.

JIM HAROLD: That would be – if you want to call it a gift, that would be a tough gift to have. I’ve asked psychics about it, if they see things that are maybe tragic in somebody’s future, if they see it, how they communicate it or what they say. Everybody has a little bit different answer. But that would be something – I would not want to have that foresight, that second sight, that ability to see impending death and tragedy. That’s sad.

ELIZABETH: No, I don’t want it. I hope I don’t see it again. Since I’ve been thinking about it, since I knew I was going to tell you this story, I was thinking – I have children now and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, what happens if I see something like that? I hope I never see it again.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you. If it happened again, (a) what would you think to do, and (b) what could you do, really? In the same exact scenario, if you walked up to someone and said, “I think something horrible is going to happen to you,” they would probably think that you needed some kind of help.

ELIZABETH: Yes. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: So I don’t know what the answer to that is.

ELIZABETH: I don’t think there is one. And like I said – and I know this sounds ridiculous to anyone who hasn’t experienced it, but she just seemed so marked for death. I was so sure that this girl was going to die. I just wonder if it would’ve happened anyway, if I had warned her. 

JIM HAROLD: Right, it was fated.

ELIZABETH: Right, exactly. Even if I had warned her and she believed me, what was she going to do? I don’t know where she was going in that car, but was she never going to get in a car again, or live her life? There are so many things that can happen to us all the time.

JIM HAROLD: Absolutely. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for sharing this remarkable story. If anybody else out there has ever had a similar circumstance, I’d love to hear about it over at jimharold.com/campfire. Elizabeth, thank you again for sharing this remarkable story on the Campfire.

ELIZABETH: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Jeana is on the line from Oregon. She says she’s a hospice nurse and has many stories she could share; however, she’s going to talk about a story that involves her grandpa. Jeana, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

JEANA: Thank you. I’m a very spiritual person, and I think that’s why I ended up in the hospice world. What I always used to tell my family since I was a kid is if they were to pass away, I requested that they visit me. I always said that to my grandpa as well.

My grandpa in this story was always really gruff, a man’s man. He drove tanks in the Korean War. Just a really man’s man. But we had a special relationship because I was the only granddaughter in the family. He didn’t really talk about his past at all; he wasn’t a man of many words, and I didn’t really see any pictures or anything from when he was younger. So I didn’t know much about his past. Something about him that was really special is he had this really contagious laugh where he would just start chuckling and even if what he said wasn’t funny, you just had to laugh with him.

Anyways, I was in nursing school quite a few years ago, and during my finals, I was studying and my grandpa called me and he started telling me how much he loved me and that I was the best granddaughter he could ever ask for.

JIM HAROLD: Aww, how sweet.

JEANA: Yeah. I told him I loved him too. I kind of had an inkling that something was going on, but I just couldn’t take my focus off finals. Anyways, I finished my finals and I got home, and my dad pulled me aside and told me that shortly after I’d talked to him on the phone, my grandpa actually had passed away. They didn’t want to tell me because they wanted me to finish finals. But we ended up having to pack up right when I was done and head out to South Dakota to attend his funeral, because it’d been about a week since he’d passed.

I started having really terrible nightmares where, when I saw him and I tried to touch him, his skin would fall off. Just really sick nightmares. So I wasn’t sleeping very well. But we ended up going to the funeral and attended it. It was an open casket, which is kind of different for many funerals nowadays. I just kept thinking about those nightmares, and I wasn’t doing too well.

We went back to our hotel. My family and I were sharing a room, and everyone went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night and I didn’t really know where I was. You know when you wake up somewhere you haven’t been and you’re like, “Where am I?” So I took some time to reorient myself, I went to the bathroom, drank a half glass of water, and then when I was lying back down, I saw a really bright light. I thought I had somehow turned on the TV.

I startled and I woke up, and – I swear this is something out of a movie; I’d never experienced this before – but it was my grandpa in front of me. It was from his waist up, and he was really young. I’d never seen him this young before. He was wearing his army uniform. I thought I was asleep or something. I was confused. And then all of a sudden I felt all this peace and calmness wash over me, and he started chuckling like he always used to laugh, and then he told me, “I’m okay. Everything’s okay.”

I was in shock there for a little bit, couldn’t fall asleep right away. But then he disappeared, and that was that. I was just confused. So I took another drink of my water, finished the glass, and then I went to bed kind of confused about what happened. Then the next day we went to go visit my grandma, who moved into an assisted living home right after Grandpa passed because she was starting to have some dementia.

We were helping her unpack, and she opened a box that she said was sitting in the basement for a really long time, and the first thing she pulled out of the box was a picture of my grandpa, who looked exactly like how I had seen him the night before. Completely young, in the Army uniform, and the same smile and everything. My jaw just dropped.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

JEANA: I took that as “Okay, you listened to me, you visited me.” I’d never seen that picture before, but it looked exactly like I had seen him the night before.

JIM HAROLD: See, that’s remarkable. That’s almost like the ultimate confirmation that that was real. It wasn’t just wishful thinking. That really was your grandpa.

JEANA: Yep.

JIM HAROLD: That’s neat.

JEANA: He’s a special guy.

JIM HAROLD: I really think that’s fantastic. I think it’s one of those things where – we talk about the scary, spooky ghost stories, but I think some of the best stories we get on this show are just people who have loved ones who make sure that they reach back out and they communicate with those that they love most.

JEANA: Yeah.

JIM HAROLD: Jeana, thank you so much for being a part of the show and sharing this very special Campfire story.

JEANA: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Well, we have a couple on the line, and this is a really interesting story. We’re talking with Cynthia and Martin from Southern California. Maybe when you go to a beautiful seaside resort, you’re not exactly in a paranormal frame of mind – but maybe some things could change that, and maybe they did for Cynthia and Martin. Welcome to the show, both of you. Thank you so much for joining us, and tell us this story. It’s a fascinating one. 

CYNTHIA: Thank you, Jim. Our story happened 2007. It was summer. I want to say it was July. We had planned this wonderful vacation to Cancun, to this seaside resort. Our children were little, and they were excited to be there. We got there the night before, and this particular morning was a beautiful sunny day. It was hot. We’re ready to go, we’re planning our next steps – do we want to go see the pyramids? Are we going to go to an underground river? Are we just going to hang out by the pool?

We’re having this discussion as we’re walking to go back to our room, and the kids had gone ahead. We were just going to go put our bathing suits on and then go join them by the pool. We’re walking down through the lobby towards the elevator, and the elevator I want to say is about 10-15 feet ahead of me. My husband and I are just chatting, and we notice somebody went into the elevator. My husband, who can tell you his side…

MARTIN: In trying to be a gentleman and catch the elevator for my wife, I ran ahead, probably like 10 steps ahead. As you put your arm in the door to hold the door gently so my wife could walk in, we saw this lady – we didn’t even say anything. I just saw a lady walk by, go in the elevator that I wanted to catch. So I ran up, put my arm in, kept the door open, and as my wife walked in and I walked into the elevator, you naturally scan the whole elevator as you go through and I was like, “She must be in the corner.” And there was no one there.

JIM HAROLD: Whoa.

MARTIN: It even gives me a chill telling the story.

CYNTHIA: It’s chilling because I ran up a little bit to catch up and I went in the elevator, and I thought, “Gosh, that’s weird. I thought I saw somebody come in.” And then my husband, when he turned in to say, “Thanks for waiting” or “Sorry to hold you up” or whatever it was, he looked past me and he goes, “Wasn’t there somebody in here?” I said, “Yeah, somebody went in. That’s why you ran ahead to catch the elevator.” We both saw someone go in the elevator.

MARTIN: I really didn’t pay attention to the clothes. It was a short lady. You see a lot of workers in the area wear uniforms or something. I wouldn’t say it was a uniform. In fact, I really can’t even describe it besides it was dark clothes. I don’t know why I didn’t notice, because we’re in bathing suits, about to go put clothes on for an outing. So she should’ve stood out, but it didn’t. And if my wife hadn’t seen it, I would’ve just thought, “Okay, whatever.” But I spent a few days – 

CYNTHIA: We were talking about this, and we couldn’t let it go because I knew I saw somebody.

JIM HAROLD: It’s not every day you see a woman walk into an elevator and disappear into thin air.

CYNTHIA: Right. And we both had seen it, Jim. We were sure. So we were talking about this. “What did you see?” He said, “I saw a short lady. Not a lot of details.” To me, I saw a lady wearing the long skirts. When I was young – I grew up in Mexico, and this is the ’70s – the ladies would, to go to church, cover their heads. They would wear a little veil to be respectful. As we were talking about this, I thought, why would there be a lady wearing a veil, not wearing resort clothing? She wasn’t wearing bright colors. It’s the middle of summer; who wears black? We didn’t think of any of this.

So we’re talking back and forth for days, we’re trying to figure this out. If we couldn’t find my husband somewhere, the kids would be like, “Dad’s probably looking that elevator again.”

MARTIN: I didn’t obsess over it. It was strange. We weren’t scared or spooked, just kind of surprised. But I spent a few hours in that lobby, watching people walk through and watching reflections, just trying to –

JIM HAROLD: You were trying to come up with a logical solution.

MARTIN: Yeah, because it didn’t make sense. If there was a woman wearing dark clothes like that, why didn’t we notice her more?

CYNTHIA: Right.

MARTIN: It didn’t make sense.

CYNTHIA: We had made friends with some of the staff there, and I remember – I think his name was Ernesto. They were very cordial, and this hotel was full of mostly Americans and Europeans. Again, not a lot of Mexican ladies that looked old-fashioned on their way to church. It was a totally different vibe. I asked Ernesto – I’m like, “I’m just going to find out, Martin. This is going to drive us crazy.”

So I went up to him and I’m like, “Hi, Ernesto. Can I ask you a question?” He’s like, “Oh yes, senora, of course.” Very bright and happy and cheery. I said, “Has anyone seen anything strange around here?” He got kind of quiet and he was like, “Like what?” I was like, “Well, my husband and I, this happened. We saw this lady, nobody was in there.” He looked so uncomfortable, Jim. He looks around and he’s like, “Ay senora, they don’t like us to talk about this with the guests.”

So of course I got a chill and I was like, “Well now I have to know. Please tell me. I’m not going to say anything. It’s just for us to know.” He said during the hurricane, Hurricane Wilma, there was a lot of devastation, a lot of flooding – and when all flooding subsided and retreated back into the ocean, they did find a body in that lobby.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

CYNTHIA: That just gave me a chill. It’s giving me a chill right now. This is not anything – as you were saying, you’re in vacation mode. It’s the middle of the day. It’s not a dark and rainy night. It’s just something that happens because there was some kind of tragedy there. We’re just there to have a great old time, and it felt like we were dancing on someone’s grave, almost. It made you realize bad things happened here. It was very sobering, and I think we took the stairs after that.

MARTIN: It was still a great vacation.

CYNTHIA: Yeah, it’s a beautiful place.

MARTIN: It was a little interesting episode there.

JIM HAROLD: The juxtaposition with – your guard is down when you’re on a vacation. You’re not thinking about “Oh my gosh, I might see a ghost.” It would make sense – if the body washed up, that wasn’t necessarily a person who would be – just a regular person. Not somebody touring, not a tourist. So they wouldn’t be dressed like a tourist. It makes sense.

CYNTHIA: Right.

MARTIN: At least the elevator was going up.

CYNTHIA: Yes, that’s good. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: I don’t know if you heard it, but a few weeks ago we had a haunted bellhop in an elevator. I think this year we’ve had three elevator stories, so maybe there’s something mystical about elevators. But I love this story. It’s a great story. In a way, I think it’s kind of neat because that probably gave you one of your biggest memories from that vacation.

CYNTHIA: Absolutely. We talk about it all the time. Whenever something comes up, “Have you ever seen anything?”, we tell our little elevator story. I’m just happy that we both got to see it because I would’ve just thought it was my imagination. I just wonder how many times people do see something and they blow it off because someone else wasn’t there to witness it with them.

JIM HAROLD: Exactly. I remember one time when I was a kid, our house was a long house; it was originally two different houses. A very old house. It’s an eight frame house, and it had basically – we referred to them as two sides, but we had both sides. And the one day, I was walking through the side. There were five people in the house including me, and I knew where everybody was at that particular time. Must’ve been 11-12 years old. I could’ve sworn somebody passed me. And I knew everybody was there.

But I always doubted myself. This just reminded me of this. I’ve always remembered that, and I could’ve sworn I passed someone, but everybody in the house was accounted for, and I knew where they were at. It didn’t make any sense. So I agree with you. How many times do we see a ghost and we just think “I imagined that” or “I saw something out of the corner of my eye”? Very interesting. Cynthia and Martin, thank you for joining us today to tell us about this great spooky vacation story.

CYNTHIA: Thank you, Jim.

MARTIN: Thanks for having us.

JIM HAROLD: Yesenia is on the line from Dallas, Texas. We’re so glad to speak with her. She said she heard us from another podcast. Not sure which one, but we kept coming up, and there you go. We’re so glad that she did find us. She’s going to take us back to her teenage years and some strangeness that ensued. Yesenia, thank you for joining us today on the Campfire. Please tell us what happened.

YESENIA: Thank you, Jim. As a pre-teen or early teenage years, as all teenagers do during the school year, we sleep late and wake up early. It was one of those nights – I shared a room with one of my older sisters. We shared a room. My older sister was showering. The way that my parents’ house was laid out, it’s a 1952 house. It’s originally a two-bedroom small house, but they had a huge backyard, so my parents decided to add to the house. They created five steps down, created two more rooms. They created the kitchen downstairs.

Me and my sister shared a room downstairs. She was upstairs showering. I have another older sister whose bedroom was on the first floor. I was in my room downstairs. I decided to go up and see if my sister was almost done, because I believe I was next to shower. Right as I walked up the stairs – when you walk in from the steps, you are in the living room. Once you’re in the living room, you take a right and there’s a little hallway. There is my parents’ room to the left, and you have the restroom to the right, and also next to the restroom is my older sister.

I was about to turn to the hallway. Right as I turn, I see this figure. The only way I can explain it is it was floating. It was all white. I see a whole-body figure. It was the face. It had what seemed like a veil. I do not remember any facial expressions, facial features, anything. I just know it was a head with a veil. It had the hands extended as if it wanted a hug, and I specifically remember a rope around the waist. And I knew it was floating; I did not see any feet or anything. It was this long dress with a veil, not covering the face. It was just covering the hairline.

I froze. I don’t know how long I was there, frozen. I don’t know exactly what I did, how I did it, but I did manage to unfreeze, and the only thing I could do was run. I ran to my oldest sister’s room. I don’t know why I chose her room. My parents’ room was right across from hers. I went up to her and I started crying. I was afraid. I was crying in fear. She noticed that I was so pale. Then here come my parents, because I was crying so loud.

My mom comes in, asks me what happened, and I explain to her what I had just seen. I guess I slept that night with my parents. It was such a scary experience to see that white figure. And I never knew exactly what I saw until there was – my mom used to send us to summer camps at Catholic church. We were in class with nuns, and as the nun was speaking, I just kept staring at this statue. I was like, “Oh my God, this statue, I’ve seen it before. I don’t know where I’ve seen it, but I’ve seen it.”

I kept staring at that statue. It kept grabbing my attention until I realized, “This is the figure that I saw in the hallway.” I read the statue; it was a statue of Our Lady of Grace. It’s exactly everything – the veil, the rope around the waistline, the hands extended as if it was reaching for me. That’s what I believe I saw.

I remember my mom used to always tell me if it’s a white figure, it usually means something peaceful. If it’s a dark figure, it’s usually something evil. So I believe that what I saw was Our Lady of Grace.

JIM HAROLD: Very interesting indeed. It reminds me – my wife actually, at the same time that my mother-in-law passed, she was asleep; she woke up and she saw Mother Mary. And then, just a little while later, we got the call that her mom had passed. This was way before I was doing paranormal podcasting, before podcasting existed. So I’ve had firsthand, or very close secondhand, experience with that in our family, seeing a religious figure. It’s very interesting.

Yesenia, you said you had more stories. Can you give us one more quick one?

YESENIA: Yeah, sure. This is a very quick one. I would go visit my in-laws in Mexico. I always had this sense of – I don’t know what you call it, sixth sense, whenever I feel some spirit or something has gone on in that specific place. Ever since I visited my in-laws, I always felt something weird in in-laws’ house. My in-laws’ house is an open space. There’s really no privacy. You enter the front door; there’s the living room. Next to the living room, there’s an open arc that’s one room. Another open arc, there’s the next room. Then there’s a kitchen, and the only privacy is the restroom.

I was in the second bedroom, closest to the restroom. There was nobody behind me, nobody in front of me. I could see my husband and my mother-in-law in the first bedroom, so they were across from me, when all of a sudden I hear somebody whisper my name, “Yesenia.” Right in my right ear. I could feel the breath. I got chills. My husband stared at me because of the facial expression I was doing. I ran to him and he was like, “What happened?” I said, “I just heard somebody whisper my name.” That’s a real short one. I have a couple more.

JIM HAROLD: I’ve got to tell you, that’s a weird feeling. Nobody’s in the room, but somebody’s whispering in your ear. That’s creepy, for sure. Do you have any idea who it was?

YESENIA: I have no idea.

JIM HAROLD: The mystery remains, but Yesenia, thank you so much for joining us on the Campfire today. I hope you’ll come back to share some more stories.

YESENIA: Thank you. I sure will.

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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: Cynthia is on the line from the Windy City, Chicago, and we’re so glad that she is. She has a bit of a headscratcher for us. You know I love those stories, those headscratchers. Cynthia, thank you for joining us. I know you’re a big fan.

CYNTHIA: Thanks for having me on. Yes.

JIM HAROLD: We appreciate it. So tell us your story.

CYNTHIA: My husband and I were married on August 5^th, 2006, so it’s our 14^th wedding anniversary this week. I thought this would be a great story to tell as my first story calling in on the show. Even though I have definitely spookier stories I want to share, I thought this headscratcher would be ideal.

On our actual wedding day, I stayed at this small bed and breakfast in Richmond, Wisconsin, with my bridesmaids and my maid of honor. On our actual wedding day, our photographer was also there, and she was taking pictures while we got ready. Our church was in a nearby town called Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, where our church is.

We took all those photos with the photographer, getting ready, and then we all piled into one car with the photographer to drive those 15 minutes to the church. The photographer was still taking photos in the car as we were joking around and stuff.

As soon as we started driving, someone in the car noticed that there was this truck ahead of us with the license plate “2NOLAN.” My fiancé, husband now, his name is Nolan. I thought, what a weird coincidence that the truck in front of us, on my wedding day, says “To Nolan.” Not only is that weird, but Nolan, I consider that to be a pretty uncommon name.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s a unique name. I think of Nolan Ryan, the pitcher for the Astros and the Mets and the Angels.

CYNTHIA: Yeah, we’ve met maybe one or two other Nolans in the past. Every once in a while when we see it, it’s such an unusual name that we make a comment. “Look, Nolan!”

Anyway, so that was a weird part. But then the other really crazy part is that even though we took all these turns and a couple of side streets to the church, that truck stayed right ahead of us as if leading the way to my fiancé, who was already at the church. That car brought us all the way there, but it didn’t pull into the driveway, so it wasn’t like a guest or something like that. It just was heading in that direction the whole way. 

JIM HAROLD: He led you to Nolan.

CYNTHIA: Yeah, led me to the church. It was so crazy. And the photographer, because she had her camera handy, got a photo, and we have that on our wall all the time. I just thought it was a really sweet story that made the day extra special.

JIM HAROLD: I love it.

CYNTHIA: Funny, though: the car kept going, and I turned to everyone and I said, “Hmm, you think I should keep going?” [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Good one. I love it, though. And it sounds like it’s been a successful enterprise.

CYNTHIA: So successful, yes.

JIM HAROLD: So that was a great omen. Who knows? Maybe that was – I don’t know about your beliefs or non-beliefs, but some people would say maybe that’s a Higher Power giving their blessing. Maybe some people – I guess you have a church, so I guess that tell us a little bit. And also, maybe it’s a loved one from the other side.

CYNTHIA: I’d like to think that.

JIM HAROLD: What is the thing that the Founding Fathers said? “Providence has smiled on our endeavor” or something like that? It’s kind of like that. It’s like the universe giving you a big thumbs up.

CYNTHIA: Yeah. And we are in that area a lot because my husband’s family is from there, and they had a cottage there. So we were there all the time. Never came across that truck again.

JIM HAROLD: Was it a real truck or was it like a phantom truck constructed for the wedding day? A little wink and a nod from the universe. Cynthia, I love that story. There’s a lot of spooky and scary out there, and we love to hear those stories, but sometimes it’s just nice to hear a sweet headscratcher, and that’s what you supplied us today. Thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire.

CYNTHIA: Thank you so much for having me. I’ll call back again with some spookier stories.

JIM HAROLD: Ooh, there we go. Thanks so much.

CYNTHIA: Thanks.

JIM HAROLD: Tanya is on the line from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and we’re so glad to have her on the show. She’s going to tell us about a ghost child. Tanya, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us about this ghost child.

TANYA: It’s been going on for years; I just never put it together. You know how you try to explain stuff out the way? That’s what I did. Every time stuff would happen – like I would come home from work and I could hear somebody running across the floor upstairs. I would try to play it off like it was just my cat, but then my cat would come from downstairs somewhere. [laughs]

It really amped up when I got to Texas. I lived in Texas for about 12 years; we just sold that house earlier this year. In the meantime I came to Mississippi because I had gotten a job out here. My friend rented the house from me because my intention was to transfer back to Texas, to the Houston area. So my friend was renting the house from me.

It started when she sent me pictures of the light fixture in the bathroom. The light fixture cover was lying in the sink. And this is not something that can just come off. It takes some work to get it off. Another time, she sent me a picture where a tile from the shower fell. It was in the corner of the shower. It doesn’t get wet; absolutely no reason for it to be loose. It was on the floor.

One day, she calls me and says, “How long has the little girl been running through downstairs?” I’m thinking she’s talking about my neighbor. I’m like, “Little girl? They’ve only been there for maybe about eight months.” She was like, “No, I’m talking about in the house.” I’m like, “Wait, what do you mean?” [laughs] I was totally lost. Apparently she was sending me the pictures of stuff, and she had been hearing her, and I guess she was waiting for me to say something. I just never thought about it.

Then I started thinking back – she described the girl to me. She described what she had on. She said she always had on this yellow dress with white polka dots on it, and she described her hair, she described everything. She had socks with frilly lace on it.

Then I remember when we first got there, for about a year when we were living in that house – because the house was only like five years old when we bought it – my husband one night ran up the stairs. And he’s really agile. He was in Special Forces in the Navy. He doesn’t run into stuff. He was hitting the wall turning the landing. It was about three something in the morning. He came and flipped the light on, and he was like, “Something’s in this house. Tanya, get up. There’s something in this house.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He was like, “There’s a little girl.”

I’ve never seen this man scared, and he was scared out of his mind. He was shaking. He had fallen asleep on the couch that night, and he woke up and thought it was one of my older kids, because I have – now they’re adults, and then I have younger kids too. He thought it was one of the older kids that came and was standing over him, and he told them to go to bed. He went back to sleep, and he felt them still standing there, staring at him.

He went to jump up and it was this little girl that he didn’t know, so he jumped over the coffee table and ran upstairs. [laughs] I just shook my head. I was like, “Whatever. You sure you saw it? Maybe you drank too much or something.” He was like, “I didn’t drink anything!” He described the little girl. She had on a yellow dress with white polka dots.

So my renter says, “She’s always in the house. I hear her playing all the time, but now it’s really starting to amp up because she’s starting to cry.” All the while, I’m just sitting there speechless. She and I both see tarot card readers. She has her spiritual advisor, and I have a tarot card reader out this way that was from New Orleans. She told me that her tarot card reader told her that the girl is tied to the woman that used to live there. I was like, “Maybe it was the lady that was there before us,” because after we got there she started showing up.

She said, “No, it’s you, because you left something in the house. It’s got to be you.” I did leave stuff in the garage. She said the little girl was upset because I was supposed to have been back by then. And the weird thing was, it was a year. I was planning on coming back within a year, and it was maybe about 13-14 months in when she started acting out.

Her son saw her. One night, her son had somebody spend the night and I guess she was really playing on the stairs, and they could hear her crying. They said she was like wailing. Her son had company over, and he was about 15-16 at the time. The company called his mom to come pick him up because he heard the girl crying too.

So she’s telling me this, and I started telling my friend about it one day. I was in town; my friend stayed up there in Texas and I was in town. My daughter and her daughter are best friends also, so we’re standing there, talking. My daughter overhears me telling her friend’s mom this, and then my daughter was like, “Wait, what did you say? That’s what this has been all this time?” And she just broke down crying.

I have a little shih tzu dog. Around three something every morning, this dog would start barking like she does when somebody’s at the front door. She would be in my daughter’s room. It’s like she was determined to sleep in my daughter’s room in the bed with her every night, and around three something every morning, she would wake up barking her head off, going crazy.

JIM HAROLD: She was seeing the ghost girl.

TANYA: Yeah. It came around a little while later when me and the renter talked about it again. Anyway, my daughter just started bawling, and I had to comfort her. It was a little while later she finally would talk about it. That’s a whole other story.

But my renter called me one day and we were on the phone, and I was sitting in the car talking to her and she said now the girl was starting to come in her room and disturb her sleep every night. She said it was fine when she was in the game room area outside the bedroom, it was fine when she was out there playing and she could hear her, as long as she didn’t come in the room. She said, “But now I’m waking up and I’m seeing her walk out the bathroom. Every night, she plays with the blinds.”

I remember hearing the blinds at times at night, and I was thinking maybe a towel was on it or something and it let go. I was always explaining stuff away. She said she’d been waking up every night seeing this girl walk out the room. She woke up one night and she was standing over her. So she and her spiritual advisor went and started trying to put salt around the house. It didn’t matter; the girl was not leaving because she was upset that I wasn’t there.

And I used to be really tied to that house. I did so much work in that house, because it was one of the houses where it was a big house. They didn’t put a lot of money into the cosmetic stuff, so I upgraded a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff I did on my own. That house was like another child for me. So she was upset that somebody else was living there.

JIM HAROLD: That’s interesting.

TANYA: She described the girl to me. We’re talking and I was like, “What does she look like?” She told me what the girl looked like. She said she has the same skin complexion as me, and she’s really pretty, but she has these really sad eyes. And my eyes are kind of slanted. She was like, “Her eyes are shaped like yours, but they’re big,” which is like how my oldest daughter’s are.

I started going through Facebook, and there was this guy I had dated 24 or 25 years ago. I pulled up a picture. I just started sending her random pictures of girls, just random pictures, and I sent a picture of his daughter that had just graduated high school. She didn’t know what I was doing. I was just sending her, like, “Does she look like this one?” I’m making it seem like it’s people I know that might’ve lost kids and this might’ve been their siblings.

I sent her a picture of the guy’s daughter, and she caught her breath right then and there. She was like, “Oh my God. This looks just like her.” The one picture, it was her. And 25 years ago, I was pregnant and I was so upset because I had just had a baby. It was almost like I willed it to end, and to this day, it still tortures me.

I went to go see my tarot card reader, just to ask her about what she thinks. Because she told me one time somebody was in the house. She was like, “There’s something bad in the house.” At the time, I had a four-year-old, or two or three – he was young. He refused to go downstairs. He kept saying there was a monster downstairs. She told me to sage my house. I saged it. Whatever was bad went away. The baby that night was like, “I can go get my own stuff now. I’m not scared anymore.”

But she also told me it was something upstairs that was protecting us from what was downstairs. It was the girl. I mean, there’s so many things that went on over the years.

JIM HAROLD: So there were multiple entities, and the girl was one of them.

TANYA: Yes, but she was our protector, apparently. It had been a couple years earlier she had told me that, so I called her. I was like, “Do you remember when you told me there was something in my house?” She said, “Yeah” – because at the time, my husband and I ended up getting a divorce. She said, “You and your husband were fighting so much, y’all were bringing in too much negative energy. But one of your ancestors is there to protect you.” I said, “Ancestors? How is it she’s my ancestor?”

She said, “Well, she’s not so much older than you. Did you lose a child? I feel like this is your child.” This is what this woman’s telling me. I never told her anything. This woman has been spot-on about everything she told me, right down to how I got here in Mississippi, that I would’ve never thought that’s even possible in Mississippi. And I didn’t even interview for it. I just got a job offer.

JIM HAROLD: So she has historical accuracy with you. Does this child follow you to this day? The child followed you to Mississippi?

TANYA: She told me she does. She says she’s there, but she was still tied to the house and she was like, I need to do something to let her know it’s okay to leave the house alone. Because we just sold it. She told me, “This is your child.”

That night, after I got back home – because I left my son with my parents. He’s the youngest. Because I went to New Orleans to see her, and I went and picked my baby up and went home. He’s going on eight. We were in the house and stuff kept happening in the house, right away, to let me know somebody was there. [laughs]

I saw somebody walk past out the corner of my eye when I first walked in the house, and then I could hear this – it’s hard for me to describe. It was this high-pitched noise like somebody was talking really fast, but I couldn’t hear where it was coming from. And the house was dead quiet. The  internet wasn’t working. I was trying to figure out what was going on with the internet because my son usually comes in and turns on his TV, but he couldn’t because the internet wasn’t working. He was like, “Mom, you hear that? You don’t hear that.” I’m like, “Hear what?” He started making the noise.

But I’ve never heard anything like it since. And then the smoke alarm started going off, and it would go off. Then he came in and he was like, “Mom, why is the smoke alarm going off?” I was like, “Okay, I cannot do this today.” I was an emotional wreck after talking to this woman and she’s telling me all this stuff. She was like, “Let’s ask the cards.” She told me I had to ask the phrase out loud. She’s like, “Ask until you hear it.” So I asked it, and then I pushed the card to her.

She raised the card and she looked up and held it to her. She said, “What did you ask the cards?” It was like a stack of cards. I asked her, “Was that my child from 24 years ago?” She turned the card over and said yes. 

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

TANYA: There’s so much. I’ve told this story before and usually when I tell this story, she’ll do something to let me know she’s there.

JIM HAROLD: Seeing the circumstances and everything, even though it can scare people, do you welcome it?

TANYA: I’m trying. Like she said, she’s my protector. And there’s stuff that has happened that there’s no explanation for that has saved me from things. Like one time when my son was about four or five years old, he kept having to spit because he had a sinus infection, and we were driving from Texas to Mississippi. I gave him a cup to spit in, and all of a sudden he spilled the cup on him, and he started freaking out. He was like, “I’ve got booger water on me!” [laughs] It was funny. But he was freaking out.

I had to pull over, pull off the highway. I pulled off the highway, got him changed, cleaned up, got back on the highway. Right when I got back on the highway, there was this van that had been swerving in and out of people. That van had forced another car that was riding right near me – we were in the same area. I saw the car. That car was flipped over in the woods by the time I got back on the highway.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man, so you were saved by that.

TANYA: Yeah.

JIM HAROLD: Well, it’s an amazing story. Tanya, we thank you so much for sharing it. We have heard stories about people who believe that they’ve connected with their miscarried children and so forth, so yeah, it makes sense from the standpoint of the timing and everything.

TANYA: Yeah. My daughter that’s 15, she watches my daughter. She’s always around her too.

JIM HAROLD: There you have it. Tanya, thank you so much for joining us today on the Campfire. I appreciate it.

TANYA: I have more stories, so I’ll probably come back if I ever see a time.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Krysta from Texas. She’s been listening for quite a few years, and we appreciate it. She said that she had a very scary obsession with the Ouija board, and she’s going to tell us how that happened and what the outcome was. Krysta, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us today.

KRYSTA: Thank you for having me. This story takes place from like ’96 to ’98. I’m living in Texas right now, but I’m originally born and raised on Long Island, New York. I was starting middle school, sixth grade, in 1996, but my paternal grandparents ended up leaving Long Island, New York for Scottsdale, Arizona a few years prior. I loved them a lot. I was pretty close with them, but not as close as I was to my maternal grandparents.

A few years later – not much later after they moved there – my grandpa ended up getting sick with cancer. It spread like wildfire, pretty much, through his entire body. My paternal grandfather is of Scottish descent, and my maternal side is of Italian descent. So my Scottish paternal grandfather was very stubborn, didn’t want to let anybody know he was sick, didn’t want people to worry about him. So instead of asking for help, he pretty much took it and “bear it and grinned” it. He unfortunately passed away when I was in the sixth grade.

We were informed that he did pass away, and my sister and brother and I were really, really upset because we couldn’t attend the funeral. We ended up staying with my maternal grandparents when they went to the funeral. But then that summer, my aunt ended up buying my sister and I a Ouija board. I guess she thought it would be fun because my mom and her used to play it all the time.

I was so excited because I’ve always been into creepy things. I love Beetlejuice, love R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps. I was that kid at the book sales buying all of the Goosebumps books and stuff. I was like, “Mom, come on, I really want to talk to Grandpa.” The thought of talking to ghosts, because of Beetlejuice, I was excited. She was like, “All right, we’ll do it this evening. Calm down.”

We ended up actually making some contact, which was surprising enough. My mom was like, “Okay, something’s going on here.” [laughs] My mom was like, “One thing we can do if you want to speak to a spirit is call their name.” I said, “Okay.” I am going to use my grandfather’s name. We said, “We’d like to speak to the spirit of Clarence [last name redacted].” The planchette starts to slowly move towards “yes.” I’m like, “Whoa!”, so excited. I’m getting nervous because I wanted to ask him all about how he was feeling and if he knew that we all loved him and missed him and that we were sorry we couldn’t be there for him.

He started answering questions about things we asked, like how many kids he had, what my grandmother’s name was, where he was stationed in World War II, and all those questions came out correct. We were blown away.

Anyway, I wanted personally to keep going, but would want to play it a lot more. I started becoming obsessed with wanting to speak to my grandfather. My mom would be like, “No, you can’t. I don’t want to upset your dad. It’s already too much for him losing his dad.” I said, “All right, I understand.”

Well, I started becoming obsessed. I was excited to talk to Grandpa, and I was just excited to pretty much think I was talking to ghosts. So my friend Sam and I would sneak it out as bad teenagers during a sleepover and play it. We’d ask stupid teenage girl things. But it seemed like the more I played, the more answers I got. It became to the point where it almost seemed like it was a friend.

After a while, my parents started picking up on the fact that I was playing it a lot and they decided to take it away from me. I was really bummed out, like mad. Very, very mad. They hid it. Well, turns out my best friend Sam ended up moving to a different school. Then my other good friend moved to a different school, and I basically lost my friends. I was a loner. I was being bullied at school because I was different than everyone else.

So one day I decided to cut school. I just wanted a day of peace. I went home. It was around the holidays. I knew where my parents hid things. I don’t want to say anything for your younger listeners, but I knew where my parents hid things.

JIM HAROLD: I understand.

KRYSTA: So I found where they hid things, and there it was, the board, in the box, with a layer of dust on it. It’s almost like they forgot they even put it up there. So I took it to my room, began to play it, ask it questions. Didn’t move as much at first.

Then I would just stop playing it and then break it out, play it a little bit more, and it would start moving more. The planchette would move more and answer more questions. I had a loveseat in my sister and my bedroom, and I would hide it under the cushions of the loveseat when I went to school. I would come home, break it out, start playing.

I became so obsessed with it that I became introverted. I stopped hanging out with my sister. I stopped going over to my grandparents’ house – which I told you earlier, my maternal side are all Italian, so it’s like big family Sunday dinners. I would refuse to go. I would make up a story that I didn’t feel well, and I would just be on the board.

Then it started to – at this point I don’t even know if I was talking with my grandfather or if I was talking to a relative, perhaps. I didn’t know anything about the spirit world back then. For me, it was like, “Oh, it’s Grandpa or dead Aunt Clary or something like that. I don’t know. It’s someone that wouldn’t ever hurt me or hurt my family.”

Anyway, I ended up becoming, like I said, very introverted. It affected my entire life. The board actually told me to stop eating, that more people would like me – boys would like me – if I was pretty and thin. It’s funny because I was never unhealthy as a child, which was very weird. My mom would start weighing me. It told me to drink water. Like, “Drink water, drink water.” And my mom would weigh me and I’d be fine. Almost as if it made me become anorexic.

I started to get sickly. I started to look like a skeleton. I was aggressive. I was mean. It was just not me. It was not myself. I’m normally a funny, bubbly, lovey person.

Then it started coming down to the point where I started hearing things and then seeing things. And then I saw my grandfather standing outside on our front lawn. Wouldn’t move, wouldn’t come near our house, wouldn’t come in the house. I go to the board and say, “Grandpa, please come in the house. I want you to come in here.” It would spell out, “Let me in.” But I’d look at him in the front yard and he’d be just shaking his head. No sound coming from his mouth, nothing. His mouth wouldn’t open. Just shaking his head. I’m getting chills. It’s so long ago, but it still affects me. Okay, here we go. Chills.

Then my house started getting worse. My family started hearing little tapping. We started hearing claps. We started hearing knocks in random places. And then my mom’s mom, my Grandma Ida – she’s very, very, very sensitive, and that’s another story for another time for you. But she came over one evening and she basically said, “Krysta, if you do not stop this, something bad is going to happen.” I was like, “Whatever. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just saying that.” But I knew she knew and I knew that she knew what was going on.

That exact night – oh, I also forgot to mention here, too – back to the point where I was hiding the board underneath the loveseat in my room; I would also be putting it in bed with me at night, and my sister would hear it moving. And I’d be asleep.

JIM HAROLD: By itself.

KRYSTA: By itself.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

KRYSTA: Which was scary for her, too. She was like, “Uh, Krysta? What’s going on?”

So that night, I woke up sweating. This is the middle of winter, Long Island, New York. There’s snow on the ground, but I am sweating. I started smelling this horrible smell of burning flesh. At this point, I’m not on the top bunk; I switched on the bottom bunk with my sister. I look to my right of my pillow, and there’s this thing with this burning face. Not like Freddy Krueger, but it looked like it had this ash and soot, and he just smelled like sulfur.

I couldn’t move. I don’t know if it was sleep paralysis. I don’t know. But all I know is I did move. I found a way to jump up, and it was still there. I jumped up, I ran across my room, and it was almost as if – you know that feeling when things are setting in and you feel this nausea set in, and you’re like, “Something’s wrong”? I’m still smelling this burning smell. I have this nausea. I don’t know what else to do. I’m a young kid.

I’m going to date myself – I put my headphones on. I had a Walkman, and I put my Walkman on and I’m listening to some music and covering my ears and rocking back and forth, like, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.” I look up – it’s still fricking there in my bed. Just smiling at me with a horrible, horrible smile. And I didn’t know what to do but run.

I ran all the way through the house, up the stairs to my parents’ loft, and woke my mom up. Grabbed my mom. I was shaking, I was white. My mom came down and she literally grabbed the board and broke it in half. The minute that she broke it in half – now, the board was not very sturdy because there’s times where she’d thrown it into the garbage, I’d picked it out of a rainstorm. It’d been disheveled, let’s just say.

JIM HAROLD: Right. Distressed.

KRYSTA: Yes. Very, very distressed. Not like farmhouse distressed, but distressed. It came to the point where it just broke so easily. And I heard this horrible scream, this scream that I’ve never heard in my entire life. Almost like a metal band scream, guttural.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think the board was possessed in some way?

KRYSTA: I don’t know, to be honest with you. My mom did tell me that she thinks that my grandfather was protecting me. She doesn’t think that what I was talking to was any of my family, and neither do I now.

After growing up and being able to go out on my own, I would go frequently visit Barnes and Noble bookseller and sit there and read about the paranormal, and I said, “Wow, that happened to me.” It’s funny because I don’t tell many people this story because either people think I’m nuts or this or that. [laughs] I was even in a touring band that I traveled the world and cut records, and I didn’t tell anybody. Not at interviews, nothing. 

One thing I do tell them is I do believe in the paranormal, I do believe things exist. Do I know what causes it? No. Do I think that there’s good spirits and bad spirits? Yeah. I’m not religious. I was raised Catholic; I’m not anymore. But whatever that was scared me to death.

I’ve heard some of your callers call up on here and say that they’ve experienced something similar, and I’m like, man, I need to tell my story, because if this helps with someone to avoid this, maybe it will help them. Just hearing other people talk about it really helped me, because like I said, I’ve been wanting to call and tell you and tell everybody for a long, long time. But I just haven’t had the guts to do it because I’m scared that it’s – I don’t think they actually go away. I think they linger. You suffer from things that go on in your life. There’s loss, there’s job changes, there’s deaths in the family, there’s financial burdens, and I feel like they hold on to that. Whenever you’re down, you’re down.

JIM HAROLD: It’s quite a story. Very personal story, very scary story, and I’m glad you got out from under that and it’s not troubling you anymore, whatever that spirit or that entity was. Krysta, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We certainly appreciate it. 

KRYSTA: Thank you for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Trevor is on the line from Colorado. He’s been listening since 2013, I believe he said. Quite a while, and we really appreciate it. He’s going to take us to Costa Rica, something that happened that same year, 2013. Trevor, thank you for joing us, and please share your story.

TREVOR: Thanks, Jim. Me and some friends went down to Costa Rica in 2013, the second week of March. We were at this place, Rocking J’s. It’s in Puerto Viejo down by the Panama border, and it has a nice beach area. We had a bonfire. The whole hostel was having a party at this bonfire.

My friends had gone to bed. This is probably like 1:00 a.m. or so, and I was hanging out with this surfer from Costa Rica. He didn’t really speak English or anything; we were just pointing at things and hanging out, bonding over – I don’t know, just hanging out, pointing at girls and things.

Anyway, he goes, “Do you want to walk down to the beach and smoke?”, so we did. We had our drinks, and we’re sitting there on the beach. We’re just watching the stars, not really talking. The party got loud. These girls came from a rave up north, and they had this LED ball. I think it’s common now, but back then it blew my mind and everyone’s mind. It looked like a basketball, and it shot all these lights out, maybe 100 feet. Maybe less, 20 feet. But it seemed pretty amazing at the time and made the trees look pretty cool. But then it changed to a little louder party.

So we’re sitting there, and we see this star drop out of the right side of the horizon while we’re looking at the beach. It darts all the way over to the left of the horizon, darts back, just keeps zig-zagging everywhere. I go, “We should go tell the party. They should see this too. It’s pretty cool.” He pointed to our drinks and what we were smoking, and I’m like, “Yep, good point. This is dumb. We’re not going to tell anyone.”

So it’s just darting anywhere. I don’t know how many minutes passed; it seemed like a long time. Then it drops straight in front of us, and it gets closer and closer. It’s floating towards us, and it looks like an egg. Right side up with the fat end at the bottom. My wife has an opal ring, and it was kind of like that, purples and whites, and it was shimmering over and over, colors washing over it.

JIM HAROLD: And everybody described the same thing, everybody that saw it? I mean, there were multiple people, right?

TREVOR: That’s where I’m going with that. I’m sitting there looking at this, and I feel like it’s looking at me, knows I’m looking at it, like it’s looking into my soul. I’m thinking it’s just me and the surfer guy on the beach, and then I hear a guy say something like, “I feel like it’s looking right at me.”

Everyone had come from the beach and was standing behind us. That ball thing was still going in the trees, so someone’s like, “Turn it off! Maybe it’s coming from that.” They ran back and shut that off, and it kept floating to us. I remember those girls that had the ball were like, “We’re outta here. We’re leaving.” So a bunch of people left.

All of a sudden, it’s getting closer, and it’s getting to the point where you’re getting nervous that it’s going to come all the way close. It’s probably not as close as we thought, but maybe 250 yards out. And then two little balls shoot out the side, same side, at the bottom, and they shoot out and they suck back in, and it shoots straight up. And then it was gone.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

TREVOR: But it sat there for a long time, and it floated calmly to us. It was weird. But it had darted everywhere, crazy.

JIM HAROLD: Somebody out there might be thinking, “Well, Trevor was having a good time. Who knows what he might’ve seen?” But the thing that puts the lie to that is that other people were experiencing this, and that person that says “It looks like it’s looking at me.” So it wasn’t just you having a good time.

TREVOR: Oh, it was crazy. I’m sitting there thinking, “My friends are never going to believe this,” and then I turn around and there’s 17 people behind me or something like that. I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” And their mouths are all open, just looking at it.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think it was a star? Do you think it was something else?

TREVOR: I don’t know. It felt like it was aware. I don’t know. Like it knew what I was thinking. But then I never really thought about UFOs. I grew up in the ’90s, so I just knew they were a real thing. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Well, now they’re in the news everywhere. I think that even the government’s pretty much coming out and saying they’re a real thing.

TREVOR: Oh yeah, for sure. It was so weird, though. I’m asking people at the hostel the next morning with my friends, because I’m going to figure it out. The first guy I talk to is like, “Oh, hey man, are you the one asking people? I’ve seen it.” And his wife immediately shut him down. She’s like, “He saw something. I don’t know what it was,” and made him leave. I was like, oh, people don’t like talking about this. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Oh, there’s definitely people who do not want to talk about this. And some of them I still think are in the government. But luckily I think there are enough people coming out like you, sharing their experiences, that there’s no shutting us up. Not that I’ve – I don’t think I’ve seen a classic UFO. I saw something strange in the sky one time. I’m pretty sure it was just space junk or a small piece of meteor or something reentering. But I never saw the classic saucer or anything like that. But there’s plenty of people out there who’ve seen something, and they’re not shutting up, and I think that’s a good thing. I think we need to hear these stories.

TREVOR: Yeah, for sure. I’m in the woods all the time for work, and I never see anything anymore. Just that one time.

JIM HAROLD: Well, maybe if you keep looking up, you will see something. Trevor, thank you so much for listening for all these years and being a part of the Campfire.

TREVOR: Thanks, Jim. Have a good day.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks so much for tuning in to the Campfire. I appreciate it. If you like what we do, please rate, review, and subscribe or follow, as we said earlier. Please support our great sponsors; they help make our shows possible, as do our Plus Club members.

If you are interested in the Plus Club and getting the whole back catalog of the Campfire and the Paranormal Podcast and tons of exclusive content you can’t get if you’re not a member, make sure to check out my Plus Club. It’s all at jimharoldplus.com. Click on the banner with my face, and Bob’s your uncle. You can get your first month for as low as 99 cents for your first month with our money-saving promo codes. Check it out: jimharoldplus.com.

Thank you so much. We also thank our storytellers, of course. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody, and as always, 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.