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TRANSCRIPT

Jim Harold (00:00:00):

Ghost children, startling information revealed in a dream, and much more on this edition of Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Announcer (00:00:22):

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

Jim Harold (00:00:33):

Welcome to Jim Harold’s Campfire. This is the place where real people tell their true stories of supernatural encounters, and welcome to the program if you like that sort of thing. And if you like the show, we would ask one overriding big favor. Please share the show. The easy way to do it is while you’re listening, assuming it’s a safe place to do so, share the show right from the app as you are listening. If it’s Apple Podcast, Spotify, all the major apps, have that little share button. Share the episode right to a friend. That’s a way to share the love of course on online communities, Reddit, Facebook, Discord, X, whatever it may be, Instagram, we see a lot of people doing Instagram stories now about the show, and we appreciate it. So please, please, please share the show. That’s my number one favorite. I would ask in exchange. We bring you great stories like this one.

 Next up on the Campfire, we have a return caller, Tom from Pennsylvania is with us. And I read this story and I was just floored. It is a remarkable story and we’re so glad to have Tom with us and we really appreciate when people come on and tell very heartfelt, very personal stories, and that’s this kind of a story. Tom, welcome back to the show. Thanks for joining us and please tell us your experience,

Tom (PA) (00:01:57):

Jim. It’s great to be here. This story takes place in 1996. In March of 1996. I grew up in a town called Huntington, Pennsylvania. My parents, Faye and Al Mosser, where it was like growing up in the Cleaver household, they were married 47 years. It was like the Cosby family. It was just this, I think I saw them fight once and it was because dad was watching a football game and wasn’t listening to mom or stuff, they were just great parents. They were in the arts, they were theater people. They encouraged me to go into the arts. I’m an artist. It’s what I do. The only job I ever had. I was the pirate parrot mascot for eight years, and they thought it was the greatest thing that this kid putting his Penn State degree was jumping around in a bird suit for eight years. But it was a means to an end, just they were great people and they were well loved in the community.

(00:02:48):

They were very involved in the Chamber of Commerce and local chorus. And in 1995, they both caught cancer at the same time. And I think it was melanoma and multiple myeloma. I forget who had who, I kind of turned that off, but for a year they were in hospice care at our home. Dad was in my bedroom and mom was in her bedroom, and they would have times where one would feel better and was able to get around and then the other would be able to get around and then couldn’t. But they were staying in separate rooms for a year. And then this one particular week, they both weren’t feeling well, and so they were put in the hospital, JC Blair Memorial Hospital at Huntington, to be together. And it was kind of good. They hadn’t been able to be together in the same room in a year, and they were talking and chatting and laughing.

(00:03:40):

And then a few days later, yeah, it was nice for them. They were able to see each other and go to sleep at the same time. And dad had a turn for the worse and passed away in his sleep. So we had a funeral for him and a reception at the house, and it was very heartwarming and memorable. It’s like a reunion. But that night we went to the hospital to be with mom and she was aware of it. She was talking a little bit at that point, a couple days later, it was a Saturday morning. It was this beautiful cloudless March sunshiny morning, and she was surrounded by my two sisters, my uncle and nurses and several friends of the family. And we were with her when she passed away, she stopped breathing for about 40 seconds and we all started to weep. And then she woke up again and her eyes opened and it was like, mom, mom, no, go to the light, go to dad.

(00:04:42):

And she was really into near death experiences. So we all looked to the ceiling of the room because you hear the stories of what people see. They hover above the room and I am sure there’s some scientific reason, but the visual of that, I’m an artist so I’m very visual, the visual of that. You could almost see her soul leaving her. And it was just needless to say, it was incredibly powerful moment when you’re an adult, you finally realize you’re an adult orphan. So people hugged and said their goodbyes, and slowly people started leaving the hospital room. There was maybe three people left in the room at that point. It was my job to make a phone call to the funeral home. I went outside, it was a payphone. I went outside in the hallway, just outside the doorway, and I moved to my right and I looked back and forth looking for where the payphone was in the room beside mom’s mom was in the hospice room, wing of the hospital, in the room beside mom there was, 

(00:05:41):

I was aware of a lot of people in the room and in the doorway of the room, I’ll never forget, there was this little girl and she was around seven or eight, I guess, shoulder length black hair. She kind of had a puffy old fashioned lacy white dress, which is very striking. And I do remember thinking, I have to smile for this little girl. I probably look like a mess at this point. And she just kept looking up to me and just kept smiling. And I looked into her room and it was full of people. A couple of gentlemen were wearing hats.

(00:06:19):

I was aware of the feet and the blankets of the person who was in the bed, their feet was pushing up the covers. So I was just aware of the people, but they were bathed in silhouette because the sun was just blaring down into the room. It was beautiful. And I looked back at the little girl and she kept smiling at me and I smiled back and I started walking down the hallway and I looked forward. Then I looked back to see, I thought she’s going to bolt into that room. No, she stood out into the hallway at this point, turned her shoulders toward me and kept smiling. And it was just striking, but I had a job to do. I went to the payphone, Jim, and I was on the payphone gym for 60 seconds. I know the funeral director. And it was quick and easy.

(00:07:04):

I turned back to my left and I started walking down the hallway. And as I got closer to mom’s room, I looked back into the room that was next to hers, looked kind of taking a peek look for the little girl. There was nobody in the room. It was empty. There’s no way. I would not have seen the eight or so people that were in there leave, and they would’ve had to have bolted down the hallway and catch the elevator. I would’ve seen them. And not only that, the bed was made, there was nobody in the bed, and it just blew me away. I had just seen a bunch of people in this room and this striking little girl looking up at me, but my parents had just passed away. I had to be with mom until the funeral home arrived, and I had a lot of other things on my mind. It was in the middle of day. It was a beautiful sunshiny day, and I did not tell anybody this story. A couple days later, hey, what am I going to say? Hey, I just saw a little girl smiling at me. What happened to all the people in the room?

Jim Harold (00:08:11):

It was the time and place. And as you said, you had other things on your mind. Your mom just died, your dad died, then your mom died. You’ve got probably all the emotional stuff that goes with that. Having lost one parent I know, let alone two. And then you’ve got all the logistical stuff, and it’s probably something that was kind of out in the periphery. You’re like, wow, you probably filed that away. So that was really weird, but I’ve got to get on with what’s going on now. Yeah.

Tom (PA) (00:08:41):

Exactly. So two days later, we were preparing for another funeral and another reception in the house. And I was looking through photographs, the display at the house and at the funeral of mom from different stages of her life. And there was this one little black and white photograph. It was three inches by three inches. It was old. It was an old family photograph of either mom or dad, and had a little white border around it. And I’m looking at this little girl posing as if she’s going to first day of going to Easter Sunday or something. And that was the little girl that I saw in the doorway. I’m an artist. I have a great eye. That was the little girl. I flipped the photograph. I’m getting a little emotional. I flipped the photograph in the back and it said Faye, age seven, and that was my mom’s name.

(00:09:33):

It was my mom. Wow. That was the little girl that I saw in the doorway, smiling at this guy with long hair and probably bloodshot eyes, and she didn’t waver, and she just smiled at me as I walked down that hallway and I would say, and when I was walking down the hallway and I turned over my shoulder, she had her arms at her side, but she lifted up her right wrist and kind of gave a little wave. And that was very striking. But again, there was so much going on. I didn’t tell anybody, and I didn’t tell anybody this story until I reached out to you. And I told Mara, my wife, the story a couple weeks ago, and I checked in with my sister who was unaware of this, just to double check on some of the details. And that little girl was my mom and those people in the room. I don’t know who they were. There was a couple old fashioned hats. That’s what my dad wore. It’s what people wore back then. But that’s my story, and I’ll never forget it.

Jim Harold (00:10:35):

Do you speculate that those people were maybe loved ones kind of ushering her over to the other side?

Tom (PA) (00:10:43):

Yes, exactly what I think it was festive and it seemed like they were happy to be there. It was almost like a party because it was loud. You could hear people talking. They were only 15 feet away from me, but I couldn’t see them because the sun was pouring into these big windows and they were bathed in silhouette, as we say in the art world. But I definitely was aware of it, and I was aware of the feet of the person in the bed pushing up the covers from underneath. And when I came back, that bed was made and everybody was gone. And that’s my story. And I would testify in court, but I just didn’t tell anybody. I kept it to myself.

Jim Harold (00:11:24):

That’s amazing. That is just amazing.

Tom (PA) (00:11:26):

It wasn’t like it was at night with thunder claps and violins playing. It was in the middle of the day, and my parents had passed away five days apart, and there was other stuff going on. So yeah, it was just something that I’ll never forget.

Jim Harold (00:11:41):

The thing about it is this, is that you mentioned that it wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but I think, and we talked to the great parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach about this, that there’s this thought that for there to be a ghost or something like that, it has to be the nighttime and it has to be in this deserted building and all these memes that we’ve kind of conjecture up through movies and TV and books and popular culture, but it’s not that way at all. You’re just as likely to see somebody from the other side in broad sunny daylight. Wow. First of all, thank you for sharing the story with us because that means – 

Tom (PA) (00:12:19):

To cap it off, we were saying, mom, go to the light. Go to the light. And that room was blinded in light from the sunshine. So that was very, very memorable. And the irony of that to put a capper on it was just incredible.

Jim Harold (00:12:39):

Has it changed the way you think about the afterlife?

Tom (PA) (00:12:44):

Absolutely. It’s something that was very impactful for me. I mean, I want to live a long life, but somehow I’m not nearly as fearful. Not that I’m looking forward to it, but I’m at peace with it after seeing that it was bathed in light, this room, as if those people all went out that window towards the light on that amazing cloudless March day in Huntington, Pennsylvania.

Jim Harold (00:13:16):

This is a Campfire classic. Tom, thank you so much for sharing it with us today.

Tom (PA) (00:13:22):

Thanks, Jim. I really, really appreciate you allowing me to share my story. Stay spooky.

Jim Harold (00:13:27):

Aly is on the line from Maryland. We’re so glad that she’s here and she has what could be an astral projection story, but it has a disturbing twist. Aly, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us today.

Aly (MD) (00:13:42):

Thank you for having me, Jim. So to kind of preface my story, the women in my family, they kind of seem to have some sensitivities to the supernatural and paranormal. My mom has told me about several different experiences she had in her life, kind of receiving messages from people, and she’s also told me about experiences with my aunt and my grandmother. So it seems like there’s some kind of pattern with the women in my family kind of having these, I don’t know, I guess sensitivities you might call it. So needless to say, this isn’t, it’s not my only experience, but it’s kind of the most profound experience I’ve had, and I think it shaped the way that my sensitivities and abilities to the paranormal kind of developed. But I’ll kind of touch more on that after I tell the story. So when I was about 10 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom as usual.

(00:14:37):

Our home had a pretty open layout. So from the upstairs hallway where all the bedrooms were, I could look down the balcony and see the front door and the foyer and everything. So when I woke up that night as usual, I looked down the balcony at the front door and I saw my mom standing there. Weirdest thing ever. She was just standing there looking out the window. I obviously, I had no idea why she was standing there. I was like terrified. I was like, hello, why are you standing there? So I called out to her to see what she was doing, and she slowly turned her head and looked up at me, and she had these glowing red eyes. It was terrifying, but it was my mom. It had the same nightgown that she wore every single night, and it was my mom. So anyway, so the only thing obviously that was different was the glowing red eyes.

(00:15:38):

And so she didn’t say anything. She kept looking at me. So I was pretty scared at this point, and I never actually made it to the bathroom. I kind of just turned around and went back in my bedroom and hid under the covers as you do as a kid. And for some reason, I left my bedroom door open. You’d think I might’ve closed it at that point, but I didn’t. I just kind of left it open. So after that, I was laying in bed for a couple hours, and at one point I peeked my head out of the blankets just to kind of see, okay, is she still there? What’s going on? And Jim, I don’t know how to explain this. So I could see the balcony and the banister and how the banisters have bars and everything. So through the bars, I could see these ghostly hands grabbing towards me almost as if they were in prison trying to get out.

Jim Harold (00:16:36):

Oh, man.

Aly (MD) (00:16:37):

And it was so creepy. I don’t even know how to properly explain that, but it was kind of the freakiest thing, and the hands would not go away. I kept peeking every couple of minutes and they were still there. It was so weird. I know that I was awake. I know that I wasn’t dreaming. I’ve never slept walked or anything like that. I’m someone who, when I’m awake, I know I’m awake. I’m a pretty light sleeper. So I kind of ruled out that I wasn’t hallucinating or dreaming or anything. So one of the reasons why, I think maybe it could have been some kind of astral projection where maybe my spirit was the one to walk out to the bathroom and then I came back into my body or something. I’m not really sure. So that’s kind of a weird part, but then it also kind of has a mimic aspect to it, or a doppelganger with my mom.

Jim Harold (00:17:33):

It wasn’t actually your mom, but it’s something that looked like your mom.

Aly (MD) (00:17:36):

Yeah. And it’s so freaky. And so kind of like I said in the beginning, I’ve always had these experiences growing up, and one of my, what you’d call abilities or sensitivities was when I was younger, I used to be able to close my eyes and it would look like there were spirits coming towards me. I could see a shadowy figure. And it seemed like they were trying to talk to me and give a message to me kind of how my mom receives messages from spirits. But instead of hearing, I would kind of see. But ever since this experience, I have not had that ability. I think I got so scared I closed that off. So now it’s kind of more, if I do sense something, it’s more like a picture will pop into my head, but I don’t have that ability my mom has anymore because I think because of this experience, because I was so scared.

Jim Harold (00:18:43):

So if it wasn’t your mom, what do you think it was?

Aly (MD) (00:18:48):

I honestly don’t know. I think it was something that maybe at a different kind of realm was pretending to be my mom, and it was kind of coming towards me in a way. That’s why it had these weird hands and everything. I think it was trying to get close to me in a malicious way, if that makes sense. And then I kind of closed that off for myself. I was like, no, I’m not going to mess with that anymore.

Jim Harold (00:19:17):

Now, do you think it was at all attached to, do you think it was more attached to the people to you, or do you think it was more attached to the place?

Aly (MD) (00:19:26):

Possibly the people, the house I grew up in, it was a very new house. I mean, I don’t really know much about the land or anything, but I do know my mom had a very terrifying situation when she was younger playing with a Ouija board, and maybe it’s possible there was something kind of attached to her at some point in her life. Yeah, that’s the only thing you think of.

Jim Harold (00:19:55):

Yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s frightening. That is truly frightening. Because that was going to be the question. I’m glad you addressed that because a lot of people say, oh, she had a bad dream, but you know that you weren’t dreaming, and I believe you. Wow. So it’s kind of informed your interest in all of this, I assume, over the years.

Aly (MD) (00:20:17):

Definitely. Yeah. Like I said, I have other experiences, but this one was definitely the most profound, and it’s something that I’ve never really had an answer to. It’s definitely the weirdest experience I’ve ever had. And I think I remember hearing a story that was kind of similar to this a couple months ago on your show that made me kind of think like, oh, I should tell my story too. There’s something about the glowing eyes or astral projection or something. I don’t know. But yeah, that’s that.

Jim Harold (00:20:52):

I always am fascinated about this idea of doppelgangers. And then it even goes into, and you may have heard me talk about this before, the djinn, are you familiar with the djinn?

Aly (MD) (00:21:03):

A little bit? Yeah, I think I’ve heard you talk about it

Jim Harold (00:21:06):

And the djinn are from kind of the Middle Eastern culture, and it’s kind of where the idea of genies came from. And the idea is that they are shapeshifters and can be imposters to other things. It’s never perfect though, and it’s never a hundred percent, but I always wonder when these kind of stories are coming up, maybe it’s at the djinn, I don’t know. But all I know is I want to be far away from it. 

Aly (MD) (00:21:33):

Yeah, definitely.

Jim Harold (00:21:34):

Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight. I certainly appreciate it, Aly, and thanks. And if anything else happens, I hope it doesn’t, but if it does, please let us know. Thanks for being on the show, and stay spooky.

Aly (MD) (00:21:47):

Thank you. Stay spooky.

Jim Harold (00:21:49):

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Announcer (00:24:38):

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

Jim Harold (00:24:54):

Darin is calling in from Ontario, Canada, and we’re so glad to have her with us. And she’s a brand new listener. Just started listening last month, my goodness. But she is coming with a story. I think this could be a Campfire Classic. Oh boy. No pressure, Daryn. No pressure. Tell us this story. It sounds fantastic.

Deryn (CAN) (00:25:18):

Yeah, I’m really excited to tell the story. I’m going to date myself a little bit. So this took place 26 years ago when I was 13 years old, living in Manitoba. 

Jim Harold (00:25:29):

You’re young. You’re young.

Deryn (CAN) (00:25:32):

Yeah, I was.

Jim Harold (00:25:33):

No, you’re young now.

Deryn (CAN) (00:25:35):

Oh, well thank you. I appreciate that. So I had joined the Sea Cadets, an organization kind of affiliated with the military, and my first summer was a two week training program out in Saskatchewan. And this training program took place in a place called Port Qu’Appelle in Echo Valley. Sorry, I’m saying ‘uh’ a lot. So the history behind this place is that it actually used to be called Fort San. And for people who lived there, they know that this used to be a tuberculosis sanatorium. Back around the early 1900s, there were a lot of buildings kind of just to paint the picture. It was within the valley, there were rolling hills. It was gorgeous. We were right on the Echo Lake, sailing program. It was beautiful. But the stories that kind of came with it were not so exciting. So there was one building in particular, it was called Mission Building, and this is where probably myself along with 20 other girls were situated for the two weeks we were housed there.

(00:26:43):

And how it was kind of laid out. We were on the third floor and on both sides of the hallway, there were rooms. The room that I ended up being on was also adjacent to a sunroom that went down the entire length of the building, but there were two girls to each room. And because it’s a safety hazard, we were not allowed to lock the doors or even really shut the doors, unless it was for privacy at night, just to have the quiet. So myself and my roommate, it was only a two week period. And I distinctly remember, I’m actually going to backtrack just a little bit just to kind of paint a picture for the room. You walk into the room and completely to the left of you is a closet. Right in front of you is a bunk bed right across from the bunk bed was a dresser with a mirror.

(00:27:37):

And right beside the dresser was a locker. And at the foot of the bed was the French doors to this long sunroom. So we were told that this building actually used to house the children who were sick with tuberculosis, and they would put them out into the sunroom on nice days to get some fresh air and some sun. So not a big deal. Me and my roommate, we get to know each other. I got the top bunk. My roommate got the bottom bunk, and our bunk faced the mirror. So one night I distinctly remember, I ended up getting woken up by my roommate, and she was just flush. She was crying, she was frantic, and I had to get her to calm down before she could even tell me what was going on. When I finally got her to calm down, she started telling me how she was sleeping.

(00:28:33):

She was facing the wall and something, she doesn’t know exactly what it was, something made her wake up. She rolled over, looked in the mirror in the dresser, and saw a little boy in striped pajamas just staring at her, b it wutasn’t even that. It was the fact that he was sitting almost on her lap. She couldn’t feel anything, but he was almost sitting on her lap, hugging his knees to his chest, and his eyes were just a void. They were just black, and he was just staring down at her. And she’s seen all of this in the reflection of the mirror, obviously as a 13-year-old, 12, 13-year-old, that was enough to make her just jump right out of bed and wake me up. I would’ve done the same thing. So she’s telling me this story, telling me what she saw, frantic, and she just asked, she’s like, can I please come up to your bunk?

(00:29:36):

And of course I say, yes, of course. Come on up. She wants the inside next to the, so I let her have the inside, and she’s just telling me a little bit more about the story. And within two minutes of her getting up there and us just lying down and her telling me what led to this, all of a sudden at the end of the bed where my feet are, I can feel the mattress compressing. And then decompressing as if someone is lifting themselves up over the mattress to look at us and then going back down. But this was repetitive. It kept happening. And finally after a few times that was happening, and I did not have the guts to even look, I finally asked her, I’m like, are you doing that with your feet? And she’s like, no, I thought you were doing that.

(00:30:24):

I’m like, no. So we counted to I think probably three or five, and we’re like, okay, let’s look at the same time. So we counted, we look, there’s nothing there. And of course we put our heads back down, we’re lying down, we’re talking, and it starts up again. And we’re like, okay, what? Being 13 year olds, what is going on? Finally, I think both of us kind of said, stop. And it kind of dissipated a bit. You could feel like a heaviness in the room. Even at that age, you could feel this heaviness.

(00:31:05):

Eventually, we were able to calm ourselves down enough that we could fall asleep and get a little bit of rest. And unfortunately, that’s not where it ended for me. It got considerably stranger and a little bit, this is the chilling part. This is where it kind of gets scary and very personal. So I’m going to move it into the dream that I ended up having out of all of this. So I fell asleep, and all of a sudden in this dream again, I had mentioned before, you’re not allowed to lock the doors for safety reasons. So there’s about 20 of us. And in this dream, a fellow cadet is complaining to our head instructor saying whatever her name was, Janice, I think it was. She’s like, Janice, my door is closed. It’s locked. I can’t get into my room, and I can hear a bunch of girls in my room talking.

(00:32:03):

So the instructor goes up to the door and knocks on the door, and she’s like, Hey, girls, you need need to unlock the door. You need to come out. And she listens to the doors. She can hear voices in there. She can’t make out what they’re saying. It’s a bunch of whispers over top of one another. And she’s like, Hey, girls, I’m really not joking. You need to come out. This isn’t funny. And of course, nothing. The door doesn’t open. The voices start to get louder, and the instructor starts to get a little suspicious. So she calls everyone out of the rooms. We had a numbering system. Everyone had a number. So she’s like, okay, girls, number off. She wanted to do a head count, essentially. So we all number off, and she accounts for all of us. We’re all out there, but the door’s still locked, the voices are still there.

(00:32:54):

Only now they’re getting louder and louder, and more aggressive. So now they’re starting to say things that you can actually hear, like they need to get out, they need to get out right now. They’ve got to hurry. They’re all going to die, get out, get out. And it’s just voices on top of voices, and they’re getting louder and more aggressive. And at that moment when the instructor realizes that all the girls are out in the hallway, and there’s still an unexplained something in that room in the dream, again, I’ll just reiterate, this is in a dream. Blood starts to drip from the door. So of course, 13 year olds, and the instructor is a teenager herself. We’re all freaking out. And she’s like, girls, get out of the building right now. Get out. So we’re all screaming. Imagine a stampede of 13-year-old girls just screaming, yelling, they’re scared.

(00:33:48):

And that’s what the dream was. So it was all of us just running down the hall. And I zone in on myself in a dream, and I can see myself screaming and yelling along with the rest of them at the top of my lungs running down the hall. And it’s almost like it went into a movie, and all of a sudden things kind of slowed down. The sound in the dream went mute, and my view of myself running down the hall changed completely to now I’m looking at myself in my bed with my roommate exactly right beside me, where I left her when I fell asleep that night. And my eyes in the dream, it’s almost like my face from the hallway flashes to my face in the bed, and I have a gaping mouth. I’m screaming, but no sound is coming out. It’s muted.

(00:34:44):

And I’m in the bed just screaming. And in that moment, I actually sat in real life. I sat straight up and my roommate, now we’re back in real time. This isn’t the dream anymore. My roommate actually woke up just moments before me. She’s like, are you okay? I’m like, I just had the weirdest dream. She’s like, are you okay though? I’m like, why? She’s like, because you sounded like you were choking. You were gasping for air. You couldn’t breathe. So then I told her the dream about how I had this dream about the girls, and I was screaming, and she’s like, Daryn, you were not, it sounded like you were choking. You were struggling for breath. Oh, it was the weirdest feeling. It felt heavy. It felt tight in my throat. And pretty much right after that, my roommate made a decision to ask to be moved to a different room within a few days. She got her wish. I got a different roommate. But after that, we had a considerable cold spot that just moved from place to place in our room. So there’d be, say, the morning that cold spot would be next to the locker. By that afternoon, it would be over by the French doors. The next day it would be by the closet, and it would just constantly shift and move throughout the day and throughout the following days in the week.

Yeah, so that is probably the biggest chilling one. We had some other little things like throughout that week, we’d have inspections in the morning, so our bed had to be super tight, and there’d be little hand imprints smaller than a 13 year old’s hand. 

Jim Harold (00:36:35):

Oh, man.

Deryn (CAN) (00:36:36):

Hand imprints in the military style made bed. There’d be dark fingerprint streaks on the wall next to where she slept,d a few very strange things.

Jim Harold (00:36:50):

The elevator, you said there’s something about the elevator, right?

Deryn (CAN) (00:36:53):

Yeah. So there was an elevator in the building, and back in the day, it was used to bring up meds and the nurses used it to transport children, I think in wheelchairs, et cetera. We were not allowed to use the wheel, or, use the elevator. But one day we ended up taking it on a kind of dare, and our instructors kind came with us, and there were streaks down the sides of the walls of that elevator shaft that just could not be explained. They were kind of dark and brownish. I want to say that it looked like dried blood. And there had been rumors that a nurse had hung herself up in that shaft.

Jim Harold (00:37:41):

Oh, man.

Deryn (CAN) (00:37:43):

I don’t know if I fully believe that.

Jim Harold (00:37:45):

It might’ve been like an urban legend.

Deryn (CAN) (00:37:48):

It could have been an urban legend. But if you look up the history of this place, it is known as one of the most haunted places in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan. There are many, many, many accounts of ghost stories and different experiences. That was not my only time that I visited there, and the following two years that I went there, there were other experiences that some of my friends had experienced that were quite unnerving in different parts. There were many different buildings on that property. Like I said, it was very, very beautiful in the daylight, but at nighttime is quite creepy. 

Jim Harold (00:38:27):

Now I’m surprised. When we were talking offline, you mentioned how much you and your family enjoy this kind of spooky stuff. So some people, when something like this happens to, they run away from it. It seems like maybe you run toward it a little bit. Is that right?

Deryn (CAN) (00:38:42):

A little bit. I mean, I love scary movies. My middle daughter, I’m going to kind of do a little shout out to her, Sydney, me and her, she’s actually in Air Cadets now, and we listen to your show every Thursday because that’s on her way in and home from cadets, because it’s kind of our thing to do when we’re driving into town.

Jim Harold (00:39:05):

Oh, that’s so neat. Well, Deryn, thank you so much, so much for sharing such a compelling story on the Campfire, and please come on and share more of your stories. But that was a great one. Thank you for coming on the show. So glad you found us.

Deryn (CAN) (00:39:21):

Thank you.

Jim Harold (00:39:22):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is sponsored by Better Help. What are some of the things you want to keep the same about yourself or your life in 2024? We always think about how we can change, how we can morph. Well, maybe for a change, think opposite of New Year, new you, where are you already crushing it? You know,  around New Years we get obsessed with how to change ourselves instead of just expanding on what we’re already doing, right? Maybe you finally organized one part of your space and you want to tackle another. And regardless of your strengths, therapy can help you find them. So you can ditch the extreme resolutions and make changes that really stick. Therapy can be a helper to just help you along. It doesn’t have to be a massive change. It can just be part of continuous improvement, because therapy can help you learn positive coping skills, how to set boundaries.

(00:40:24):

It empowers you to be the best version of yourself, maybe know yourself better. That’s why I think if you’re thinking of starting therapy, you should give better help a try. It’s entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. And I think that’s so important in our busy lives. It’s so hard to fit time in for us. And you definitely do that with therapy and can do that with Better Help. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge. Celebrate the progress you’ve already made. Visit better help.com/JimHarold today to get 10% off your first month. That’s better Help hlp.com/ Jim Harold. That’s better help.com / J I-M-H-A-R-O-L-D. And we thank Better Help for their sponsorship of Jim Harold’s Campfire

Announcer (00:41:23):

Want the entire Campfire archive going back to 2009 plus much more? Get in on Jim’s Plus Club at jimharoldplus.com. Now, back to another great story.

Jim Harold (00:41:34):

Oooooh, this is a creepy one. Aaron is on the line from Oklahoma. He’s been listening for a few years on Spotify, and we’re so glad to have that great platform support. We appreciate it. And he is going to tell us about, well, again, when he was young, him and his friends were playing, and then strangeness most definitely ensued. Aaron, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Aaron (OK) (00:42:01):

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so this happened when I was probably either nine or 10 years old. Yeah. I was playing with one of my friends, neighborhood friends, neighborhood we lived in, and my sister, so it was my friend Rocky, and my sister and myself. We were playing in my room, which had a window that faced the front of the house and oh, I should say. So one of the reasons we were playing is that our parents, they like to go walking. They’d walk the neighborhood in the evening. My parents and my friends’ parents would walk the neighborhood. So they went out to go walking, and they kind of left us at the house and we were all just playing in my room, playing whatever. And then I don’t remember who exactly it was, if it was my sister or if it was my friend who noticed my mom in the window. My window faced the front porch. So my mom was standing on the front porch. So he kind of pointed her out, and we went up to the window and we’re kind of asking her what does she want? Did she need something? And she’s not saying anything, which is odd. And as we were start to ask her questions, she starts to kind of beckon us with her finger that come here finger motion.

(00:43:42):

And so she’s not answering, something’s off, and I can tell just something’s off. And I happened to look down. And when I looked down, basically from her, right as it gets past her knee, she starts to become transparent.

Jim Harold (00:43:59):

Oh man.

Aaron (OK) (00:43:59):

Yeah. Yeah. I pointed it out. I remember, I don’t know who started, but one of us just screamed and we all screamed and then just ran and then hid in another part of the house and basically waited for our parents to get back from walking. And I remember we put my mom to the question, we thought they had pulled some kind of trick on us, and they swear up and down that nope, didn’t have anything to do with it. Which now looking back on it, I don’t know how they would’ve done that. But yeah, that was it. It was incredible. We were very, very scared.

Jim Harold (00:44:39):

So they said, hey, we had nothing to do with this,

Aaron (OK) (00:44:44):

Right. Right, they said, Nope, we weren’t. And they were as baffled as we were when we told ’em. And at first they thought we were pulling their leg, they thought we were pulling their leg, and we thought on the other end that they were pulling a joke on us. Until finally, yeah, couldn’t explain it.

Jim Harold (00:45:02):

So do you have any theories?

Aaron (OK) (00:45:07):

I have no idea what it was, to be honest, right? Like,. I’ve listened to the show and people talk about stuff like doppelgangers and stuff, and I don’t feel it was like a doppelganger. I don’t know. There was definitely, there was something about it that was sinister. That’s all I can say is I had a feeling that something was off and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t good. And that’s all I can really say is I just had a bad feeling about the whole thing.

Jim Harold (00:45:38):

Yeah. It’s one of those things where I got to say, I mean, you take the person probably in life, most people, if you had to say, if you had to trust one person, probably, especially when you’re a kid, one person you trust in your life is your mom, right? That’s a bond no other because you came from her. And to think that that is kind of seized upon by some kind of sinister something or other, that makes it even more creepy, don’t you think?

Aaron (OK) (00:46:10):

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It definitely does. And the fact that it wanted us to come outside where it was is just, I don’t know. It was really kind of chilling.

Jim Harold (00:46:21):

We hear a lot of cases, and some people term it as doppelgangers, but things posing as they aren’t. And I always wonder, what is the motivation? What’s the reason? Whether it’s this or the black-eyed kid phenomena or all these strange, strange things. We had a story from a woman in Germany whose husband was serving in the US military, and she realized that her husband was in bed with her spooning, and it wasn’t her husband. It was a near perfect copy. So we’ve had, oh, wow. Yeah, that’s even creepier. And she rebuked it and it left and whatever, but it looked just like her husband. But she realized her husband went out for a run every day at that time. And then she basically said a prayer or something, and the faux husband said something like, don’t say that. And it’s like, oh my gosh. That is creepy.

(00:47:30):

So I’ll tell you, there’s something out there making believe they’re loved ones and what it is. I want to stay far, far away from Aaron, thank you so much for sharing your show, your story on the Campfire tonight, and stay spooky. 

Aaron (OK):

Yeah, thank you. Stay spooky. 

Jim Harold:

Next up on the Campfire is Robin from Maryland, and Dr. Victor told her about the show. And Dr. Victor, thank you very much and stay spooky. And cooly enough. Cooley, I don’t know if that is a word, Cooley. I guess it is. It’s very cool. Robin used to work in a metaphysical shop where a lot of odd stuff happened. Robin, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Robyn (MD) (00:48:12):

Hello? Yeah, so I worked in a metaphysical shop about nine-ish years ago. It was located in a very historical old part of our downtown district. All the buildings were at least a hundred years old, houses and whatnot. So that’s where the shop was. And we had a lot of tarot card readers and palm readers and stuff like that. And we had a lot of little things happening in the shop all the time to the point that we used to joke about that there would be a metaphysical billboard on the roof of our building saying, ghosts. If you want to talk to somebody, come here.

Jim Harold (00:48:53):

Oh, cool.

Robyn (MD) (00:48:54):

So yeah, it was a very cool little shop. And so on this instance, it was a normal weekend. People were coming in and out and shopping, and the way the shop was set up, we had two doors. One was the front door facing the street, and then the other was the back door that faced the parking lot. And we had a lot of regulars. So one of our regulars came in and he had a weird energy to him, always kind of like a chaotic vibe, but activity in the store would always kind of act up when he was there. And so he was shopping and he was finishing up, and I had a friend there with me who was just visiting and hanging out. And then we had another customer come in who was a regular, and she was dressed like a voodoo priestess. I don’t want to say she was a voodoo priestess.

(00:49:42):

I don’t know what she practiced, but she had that kind of air about her. She had a very strong presence to her. So she was waiting for her turn at the counter, and he finished up and he left through the back door. And then my friend was like, oh, I’m going to go upstairs and make a cup of tea. So he went up to the second floor where we have offices and whatnot. Then she comes up to the register to place an order for herbs. We had a whole wall behind the counter of every counter herb you could think of in a jar. It was really cool. And she starts to place her order and don’t know how to really explain it.

(00:50:28):

The energy in the room shifted almost. It was very odd and eerie and quiet. And she kind of leaned over the counter and looked at me and said, I think something’s going to happen. So yeah, everything, her face dropped, mood changed. And I looked at her and was like, yeah, I think something’s going to happen. And we both turned our heads towards the back of the store, and it was in an instant, there was a wind tunnel, and it was just like this energy. It was wind blowing from the back of the store to the front. And the way the shop was set up, there was three rooms, and in the middle room there was displays, shelves that had all the merchandise on it. And there was four or five of them. And the one closest to us started vibrating and rumbling, and it was moving, visibly moving.

(00:51:23):

And it was like as if somebody took their arm and was moving all of the objects on the shelf off onto the floor just in one swoop. So it would be like, first shelf, all the stuff came off. Second shelf, all the stuff came off, third bottom shelf, everything came off. And then the wooden shelf that was holding all the merchandise flipped off. And then the second one flipped off, and then the third one flipped off. And then the brackets holding the shelf all plinked off one by one as well. So it was like plink, plink, plink. And then it all fell to the floor, crashed. It was big noise. And we kind of just stood there and watched it all happen. And it was matter of seconds. And then the wind tunnel stopped, the shelf stopped moving, and it was just quiet.

(00:52:22):

And so you had candles, candle holders, glass, all sorts of tchotchkes, just everything was just smashed on the floor. And we just kind of stood there for a second. And then my friend came downstairs holding the cups of tea, and he was just like, what just happened? And he was kind of upset because he comes to the store in hopes of seeing spirit or something happen, and he didn’t hear or notice anything in the few seconds of this all happened. And so I kind of just stood there, what do I do next? So the priestess lady starts, I don’t know what she was doing. She was starting doing a cleansing or a clearing of the area. She goes to the back of the store, opens the door, opens the front door, and starts doing this kind of ritual. And I kind of let her do her own thing. She had friends who were waiting for outside. They came in, they started doing their own little thing, and I just cleaned everything up. And it was as if nothing happened. Nothing else happened. Nothing else happened the rest of the day, but it was just kind of like for those few seconds, it was just this chaotic wind, physical wind in a store where there was no windows or open doors or anything like that.

Jim Harold (00:53:36):

Now I’m guessing, I’m guessing that working in a place like that, you saw quite a few kind of odd things from the standpoint that to me being into that and the different people that would come in and the different artifacts and all that bring in a lot of energy. Was that your experience? That was highly charged? A lot of stuff happened.

Robyn (MD) (00:53:58):

There was always things happening in the store, like little things. And we’d say we had resident spirits. I definitely feel like certain people would bring baggage with them or they would bring a certain energy with them or a certain kind of charge. I believe the customer, the regular customer that was in there before either conjured something up or brought something with him that stayed in the store and decided to make their presence known.

Jim Harold (00:54:29):

Now did. Some people would think, oh, well, maybe you ought to spiritually protect yourself or something when you go into a highly charged place. Not to say it’s a bad place, but again, it’s kind of like a crossroads for a lot of different energies. Did you do something like that before you would go in and those kind of things?

Robyn (MD) (00:54:48):

In the morning we’d burn sage and whatnot, and I would kind of do my own kind of grounding to protect myself and whatnot. It was the opening and closing ritual of the store. And I mean, it was a normal day, did all the normal things. It was a normal weekend. It was just a very strange instance. And I’m happy that she was there, not only to witness it, I was by myself from the store at that point, but to kind of take over clearing whatever energy was in there at the time.

Jim Harold (00:55:25):

Interesting. That had to be an interesting place and an interesting job to work for sure. Well, I know you have other stories. I hope you’ll join us at some point in the future and tell those. And I thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire and stay spooky.

Robyn (MD) (00:55:39):

Thank you. Stay spooky

Jim Harold (00:55:41):

And special thanks to Dr. Victor. Stay spooky, Dr. Victor, 

Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Calm. Do you get into bed and start checking all your social media apps and all of a sudden 45 minutes have passed? I do it sometimes too, but if you’re a nighttime doom scroller, let Calm help you form new and healthy bedtime habits this year. And I know it helps me a lot when I get into my doom scrolling mode, I just turn to calm because it is the number one app for sleep and meditation, giving you the power to calm your mind and change your life, and Calm recognizes that everyone faces unique challenges in their daily lives, that needs differ from person to person and the time for meditation, well,  it might vary, and since self practices are so deeply personal, calm strives to provide content that caters to your preferences and needs.

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Their meditations range from focuses on anxiety and stress, relaxation and focus, to building habits and taking care of your physical wellbeing. They have sleep stories with hundreds of titles to choose from, including sleep meditations and calming music that will have you drifting off to dreamland quickly and naturally. And we love Calm here in the Harold household. We all use it. And again, when I find myself doom scrolling, I’m like, put down the social media apps, put everything down, put the phone down, but first, tune into calm because it will calm you down and you’ll go right off to sleep. And it works like a charm every time. The Calm app puts the tools you need to feel better in your back pocket. If you go to calm.com/Campfire, you’ll get a special offer of 40% off a calm premium subscription, and new content is added each and every week. Stress less, sleep more, and live better with Calm. For listeners of this show, Calm is offering an exclusive offer, a 40% off a calm premium subscription at calm dot com slash Campfire. Go to calm.com/Campfire for 40% off unlimited access to Calm’s in entire library. That’s calm.com/ Campfire. Thanks, Calm.

Announcer (00:58:01):

You are listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Jim Harold (00:58:04):

Charlie is on the line from Ohio, OHIO, and he was on the show back in 2019, and I was mentioning to him a few things have happened since then, but we are glad to have him on. Last time he talked about kind of a haunted theater and a theater haunting, and he’s got another one for us. Charlie, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us again, and glad to talk to you after all these years, and please tell us this story.

Charlie (OH) (00:58:33):

Yeah, thanks, Jim. Okay, so the last one happened when I was in college in Ohio, but this happened, this story I’m about to tell, happened when I was eight or nine years old. I was really young. I grew up in theater, my theater family, my grandparents really were involved in this local community theater. And I went with them very often. And on this one occasion, I went with them to see a matinee. So it was like in the middle of the day. I don’t remember the show, but after the show, everyone always goes downstairs and they mingle and they talk when everyone’s getting dressed.

(00:59:21):

But after everyone got done getting back into regular clothes and leaving, there’s always a void. The energy had been almost taken out with the people. I decided I needed to use the restroom before we left, and I was the only one downstairs. And you could feel that absence of energy. It was really strange. And the way that this theater was set up, you could see the very back of it. It was almost like a large hallway, and there was a slight right, and that’s where the bathrooms were to the very back. So I remember walking back there, through this energy absence, and I walked through there and I went to the restroom. And while I was in there, I felt a presence like I wasn’t alone, which was very scary at that age. So I finished and I ran out of the bathroom. I don’t even think I washed my hands, I  just left. And I remember walking through the hallway and I could still feel eyes boring into the back of my head. And as I’m walking through the hallway, I get to the door to finally leave and I turn around and I see a shadow, a shadow figure, staring at me. His head was peeking around the corner from where I had just been,

Jim Harold (01:00:54):

Oooh.

Charlie (OH) (01:00:55):

A couple minutes ago. I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell he was staring at me. Yeah, it was intense. You could almost feel it wasn’t anger, but it was like sadness. He missed. I mean, I’m just interpreting at this point, but you could almost feel like his missing of the people and the energy in the theater. But I ran upstairs to my grandparents. I told my grandma what I saw. And the strangest thing is they knew who it was.

Jim Harold (01:01:32):

Really?

Charlie (OH) (01:01:33):

They knew the guy that had passed. Yeah. Because it would just been such a close knit community. They’ve known each other for, I was going to say hundreds of years, but not hundreds. Decades. So they knew the guy that had passed. So it was known that his ghost was downstairs.

Jim Harold (01:01:51):

Huh. Wow. That’s kind of a cool story.

Charlie (OH) (01:01:56):

I think so. I remember it, but it was almost like a dream at this point because it was so long ago.

Jim Harold (01:02:03):

Sure, sure. I get that. Now, let me ask, so you kind of considered it, even though it was kind of scary for a little kid, obviously, as kind of a friendly haunting. Is that the idea?

Charlie (OH) (01:02:13):

Yeah. Other people besides me had talked about this ghost and no one’s ever been scared of him. It’s just kind of a presence in the area because he’s known to those people. And again, it wasn’t scary, it was sad. It was more of just a wish he could be part of the party, I think.

Jim Harold (01:02:37):

Wow. How cool is that? Well, I mean, I am sure because when haunted theaters come up, I always mention this, but I’ll mention it again since it’s been five years. But to me it makes sense that theaters are some of the most haunted places because I’ve always heard from experts that where there’s a lot of emotion, there tends to be more hauntings and where else is there more emotion? We all know, and at least I would say that’s fair to say, show people are type A people, not in a bad way. They’re great, but they’re high strung a little bit, I think. And they’re the kind of people that have a lot of energy and they leave a lot of energy on the stage because on the stage they’re pouring out what good, bad, happy, sad, drama, comedy, the whole gamut of human emotion. So if emotion is a key component, a building block, if you will, to a haunting, then what place would be more haunted than a theater?

Charlie (OH) (01:03:41):

I think you absolutely are right, Jim.

Jim Harold (01:03:43):

Makes sense. Charlie, thank you for being on the show tonight. I appreciate it. Stay spooky. And if you have any more haunted stories, theater or otherwise, please come back on the show.

Charlie (OH) (01:03:56):

Alright, thanks.

Jim Harold (01:03:57):

Lori is on the line for New England. She just found us this past Halloween. I love Halloween for various reasons, and one of the reasons is because a lot of people find Campfire and then we get to hear great stories like this one. And Lori is going to take us back to her childhood and well, a spooky story indeed. Lori, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Lori (NE) (01:04:21):

Well, it started when we went on a camping trip with the Girl Scouts. I lived in upstate New York at the time, which is a little bit of, to me, it’s a scary region. There was a lot of people that would go ghost hunting in graveyards and say, they saw ghosts there. So this was something that I didn’t like that I wasn’t a ghost hunter. I wasn’t into it when I was a kid, so it’s kind of strange this all happened. But we went on a camping trip near Lake Ontario and we were all running around finding our campsite and we’re happy with the one I picked and my friends were staying in one cabin. We were kind of in these raised sort of cabin tent things. And there was another town with different girls in a different tent. So we were just going on around doing Girl Scout stuff on the day that we got there. And there was one girl there that was kind of strange. She was from the other town and she was taking toads that she found in the forest, and she was putting ropes around their necks and kind of walking around with them like they were dogs.

Jim Harold (01:05:28):

Oh, that’s not nice!

Lori (NE) (01:05:29):

I know! I thought it was awful. I was, I really upset about it. So I told her I thought it was cruel. We’re not out here to do that to the wildlife and so forth. And she just laughed at me. So after a while, she kept doing it and I finally just, I ratted her out to the troop leader. 

Jim Harold: 

Good for you. 

Lori (NE)Yeah, they told her to stop doing that. And so things just went on. And normally we sort of had a campfire that night and went to bed. We were exhausted, we’d been swimming and everything. So the next morning we woke up, it was probably right at daybreak. We heard this screaming and we just all froze. It wasn’t coming from our tent. It was just this nonstop screaming, hysterical screaming. So we kind of peeked out and saw people going into the other tent. And so we went out there to check out what was going on, and the troop leaders kind of rushed us back into the tent. And we found out that the girl that had been tormenting the toads had gone down to brush her teeth and get some water at the spigot that was kind of down a path into the woods. And when she came back, she said she saw, or she was screaming, she couldn’t say it, a decapitated head, a big head. She said it was bigger than human and it was hovering over where the spigot was, and she just dropped everything and then ran back up the path.

Jim Harold (01:06:55):

Oh my gosh.

Lori (NE) (01:06:58):

So we were terrified at first, but then people started talking. We had to stay in our tents. We sort of went into immediate lockdown and people were trying to calm her down, but we could still hear her screaming. I  mean she just, at first we thought she was faking it maybe to get back at us for telling, for ratting her out.

Jim Harold (01:07:18):

Maybe take some of the heat off of her from the toad incident.

Lori (NE) (01:07:23):

So we calmed down. We, after a while, we didn’t take it that seriously, but the troop leaders ended up deciding that maybe somebody was harassing us and they didn’t feel safe there. So they decided to cancel the weekend and call our parents to come and get us. So we were upset about that. But we snuck out. We were supposed to stay in our tents until our parents came, but me and my friends kind of snuck out to go down to the spigot area to check it out because we didn’t want to believe her. We wanted to see nothing there. So we did. There was nothing there. We were all really nervous about it. But then we laughed about it. We thought, oh, maybe she was getting back at us or maybe she’s ill or we didn’t know what it was. So we kind of left it at that.

(01:08:10):

And I talked to my mom about it afterwards and she said maybe she was ill or she was stressed because she wasn’t used to being away from home. So we all just let it go. And then three weeks later or so, my parents felt bad that we had to cancel our trip, so they let me in. The same couple of friends that I had gone on that camping trip with stay out in our motor home, which they would park in the car all summer long so they could take trips here and there when they had the time to do it. And we did that kind of thing a lot. People didn’t worry that much then about staying outside and camping out in the tent in the yard. So we did that and there was some houses around, but at a distance. So we were out there having fun, sort of being loud.

(01:08:57):

My mother had told us we have to keep quiet. My father had a very busy day the next day and not to bother him and so forth, but we were laughing and reading magazines and probably making a lot of noise, but it was about midnight and my dog, we brought the dog out with us and the dog started barking and she didn’t usually do that, but then she started barking hysterically. And then I stopped. We stopped laughing, and then we heard tapping on the window and I kind of pulled back. There were kind of those low curtains that you have in an RV, kind of pulled that back thinking it was a friend that was coming over to bother us or visit us. And I looked out and it was like we all saw this guy. It was just this older man with white hair and he just not a nice look on his face.

(01:09:47):

He was laughing at us and we just screamed. So as soon as we started screaming, he disappeared or the face disappeared. I didn’t see any body and the dog was still barking. So I started calling up to my parents. I didn’t know if they could hear us, but my mother put her head out the window and she said, shut up out there. I told you your father had a busy day. And I said, no, you have to come out and get us. You have to come out and get us. And she’s like, well, you go back to just do what you were doing. And she slammed the window and I was like, oh my God. She didn’t take it seriously at all. And so we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t want to stay out there. So we all grabbed a steak knife.

(01:10:30):

Decided to make a run for the house. It sounds like a bad movie, but that’s what we did. So we ran to the house and my parents had put the key under the doormat by the front door so we could get back in if we needed to use the restroom or we were scared, which we were. So that was the longest few minutes trying to scramble to get that key and to get that key in the front door. We were terrified. So we ran up into my room, and then I told my parents when I got up there, I knocked on their door and I said, this guy is hanging around us, or there’s something going on. And they said, just go back to bed. You’re inside now. And it wasn’t like my parents to do that. My mother was kind of a worrywart and my father, he would’ve liked to probably at least check it out.

(01:11:16):

It just seemed really strange. So we were kind of upset that my parents weren’t being more responsive. So we decided to go into my bedroom, shut the door, and we looked out the window to see if he was still hanging around the RV. And there was this huge black car parked in the front lawn. It looked like a 1950s, 60s car maybe that could fit in. The kind of car that people used to drive around in and party in. There was like eight, you could get eight people in a car like that, but there was nobody in it. And you could kind of see this street light shining through it. So I don’t know if there’s somebody laying down in it maybe, but it didn’t look like there was anybody in it.

Jim Harold (01:11:57):

Right.

Lori (NE) (01:11:57):

Oh, I got back up and I told my father, because he was so particular about his lawn that he would be so upset if he didn’t care. Why happened does he’d be worried about that lawn. So I told him, there’s some huge car parked on your front lawn. And he’s like, oh, just go back to bed. It’s probably the neighbors, somebody visiting the neighbors or something. And I was like, this is just so weird that he’s not being more responsive because I mean, he’s somebody that chases, he used to chase snow abilities down the road in his car and they would come buzzing across our lawn. So we just didn’t know what to do about it. So we decided we’re not going to go to sleep until that car is gone, because that guy is probably still creeping around here. And we had the dog up with us.

(01:12:41):

If the dog starts barking again or we hear any noise at all, we’ll just call the cops from our room. So we were up there playing games, trying to keep each other awake and reading and taking turns staying up. We’d keep peeking out the window to see if the car was there, and it was still there for hours. So it was probably getting to be like three, four in the morning because it started to get a little bit lighter out. And we finally looked out and the car was gone, but there was no sound. We didn’t hear any sound at all at the car left, which is strange. The window was right there,

(01:13:18):

And it was a big car. You’d think you’d at least hear it starting up. So I don’t know, it was just such a creepy, creepy experience. And I thought maybe at first that it was somebody that was trying to prank us. And I asked around to all my friends that had older brothers or fathers that liked to work on cars, did anybody know of anybody with a car like this or somebody that would do this? Or usually somebody after something like that happened, if it was a prank, would come out with it and laugh about it. But nothing, nobody knew anybody like that, that had a car like that. And for years, I would always ask around when I’d meet people that were into cars if they knew somebody. It’s just always really bothered me that that happened.

Jim Harold (01:14:03):

Now you said in your note to me that maybe you thought it was some kind of entity and a result of what happened at the campground with the Frog Girl.

Lori (NE) (01:14:15):

Yeah. After my friends and I, they were the same ones that were camping with me and that we started to think about, wow, what if that we were laughing down there and that thing, whatever it was. I mean, I wasn’t into ghosts through the time, this is my friend’s idea, but I started to think about it. Yeah, maybe that was followed us back there or appeared to us again. And yeah, it was really, that’s how we kind of took it. We still talked about it years later. Nothing like that happened again. Well, things happened, but not that particular kind of thing.. But it was so weird. And later on when I saw Twin Peaks, that was what that character,

That’s what it looked like. I was like, oh my God, maybe it is a deadly entity.. But then we were going into another school and getting separated. So I started thinking maybe it’s just this bad energy ushering it.

Jim Harold (01:15:15):

And you didn’t even get a donut and a cup of coffee with Agent Cooper.

Lori (NE) (01:15:21):

Nothing like that. Not even from my parents.

Jim Harold (01:15:23):

Well, Lori, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story today on the Campfire. 

Lori (NE) (01:15:28):

Oh, Thank you very much for having me. It was good to share it. Thank you.

Jim Harold (01:15:32):

Jamie is on the line from Colorado and we’re so glad that she is. And she’s going to talk to us about signs from loved ones. Jamie, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.

Jamie (CO) (01:15:45):

Thank you. So I live with a roommate. We’ve lived together for about the past five years. We’ve known each other for about the past 10. So during that time, you really get to know each other’s family. And her dad was just an amazing man. He would come and he lived in a different part of the state, he would come and he would stay for weeks at a time with us. And he was just a really cool guy. But he was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and he had a long battle. But unfortunately in December of 2022, he did pass away. And it was one of those days where the sun was shining and it just didn’t quite feel fair that the sun was shining when the world had lost such an amazing person. So my roommate was the executor of his estate, and she had to travel back and forth between where we live and where he lived on the other side of the state to take care of things.

(01:16:37):

And we did not see each other for quite a while while she was going through that. So on March 13th, she happened to be home. We were getting caught up having a conversation. I remember distinctly, I was in the kitchen making a Caesar salad for us for dinner, and I get a phone call from my dad telling me that he is in the emergency room in a small town a few states away. He’s waiting for a life flight helicopter to take him to the closest trauma center. And he and my mom had been in a terrible accident, and my mom unfortunately was killed on impact and she did not survive.

Jim Harold (01:17:15):

Oh my Lord. Oh, I’m so sorry.

Jamie (CO) (01:17:18):

Thank you. And so I was so thankful my roommate, that was one of the few nights my roommate was home because I mean, I lost it as you would imagine. And my parents were actually on their way to Colorado to visit my sister and me. So we went from making plans for what we were going to be doing to now, and everything that comes after losing someone, plus having someone severely injured. And I worked for a hospital, so I immediately got working on getting my dad transferred from the hospital he was at to the hospital that I work at so I could be there for his care.

(01:17:55):

And so my roommate’s still dealing with everything after her dad’s death. I’m dealing with everything after my mom’s death. We don’t see each other for quite a while. So we’re going to fast forward from March to the end of July, and at the end of July, we both happened to be home the same night, which was rare at that time. And we had a chance to get caught up and just kind of chat with each other. And it happened to be the day before her dad’s birthday. So she was kind of feeling all the things that you feel when you have the first major milestone after losing a loved one. And we got to talking about some of the signs that we had, and that might be worth calling in another time to tell you some of those. But as we were talking, our parents never got to meet in life.

(01:18:42):

It just never worked out that they were in town at the same time. So they never got to meet. And I was really bummed about that. I thought they would’ve really gotten along well. So we were talking on, do you think your dad and my mom have met in the afterlife and are hanging out together and do they like each other? Are they having a good time? And for our sake, we decided, yeah, they have met each other and they’re getting along and they’re taking turns checking in on us. So that was a little bit of comfort. And we moved on to talking about just life events. And she was telling me that she had spent the 4th of July with her sister in the mountain town that her sister lives in, and her sister has two kids under the age of 10. And because we’re in Colorado and there’s a lot of Jeeps, most mountain towns will do a little Jeep parade on the 4th of July or for holidays. And there is a trend in the Jeep community right now to leave each other little rubber duckies. 

Jim Harold (01:19:40):

I’ve heard of that. Yeah.

Jamie (CO) (01:19:41):

So they went to this Jeep parade. All the Jeeps had rubber duckies. The kids were really excited. But the Jeep that they liked the most was this green jeep that was just filled with green rubber duckies. And my roommate said they kept talking about it all weekend. And these are the type of kids that maybe something interests them, they talk about it a little bit, and then they move on to another topic. So it was weird for them to keep bringing up this green jeep with all of these green duckies and how they were pretty sure that people gave this guy green duckies because he had a green jeep and it matched his Jeep. She said they just kept bringing it up and bringing it up. It was just one of those observations of what kids do. So little pause here to explain my office.

(01:20:23):

I work in the hospital, I work in administration. The part of the hospital I work in no longer sees patients, but my office used to be a receptionist desk. So I have a window in my office that has one of those metal shutters that rolls up and down and a shelf that goes from my side to their side so patients could stand in the hall filling out paperwork. I’m sure most people could kind of picture what I’m talking about. So since that hallway is quiet, I get a lot of people who just see that shelf set their coffee down and proceed to have a conversation, not realizing that my office is right on the other side. So I have to jump up, go out and say, Hey, I can hear you. This isn’t soundproof. This might not be the best place for you to have this conversation.

(01:21:07):

And that happens two to three times a week. It’s not very often, but it does happen. So the next morning, my roommate’s, dad’s birthday, there was multiple people who had stopped, I think about five different people had stopped before 10 o’clock to have conversations. And I was getting a little frustrated and a little annoyed because I had a lot of work that I needed to get done. So I’m having to jump up and go, Hey, I can hear you. Please move along. So I’m like, okay, maybe I can hang a sign right there to just let people know that this isn’t a private place to hold a conversation. So I get up and I go out to the other side of the window so I can see if there’s a good place to hang a sign and tucked behind the window, the wall. And where the shutter comes down is a tiny green plastic duck.

(01:21:54):

And it’s not where you would, you wouldn’t see it if you were just walking by. You had to actually stop and look in that area. And I just pick up this duck and I’m looking at it, and I don’t even know how to react. I just stick it in my pocket and I walk away and I get back to my office, I take a picture of it, I send it to my roommate, and I’m like, what are the odds that we were just talking about green duckies yesterday, and this was outside of my office today? And then as we both thought about it through the rest of the day, we kind of thought that, and this is our interpretation, that our parents are together. They conspired together to leave the green duck at my workplace so that I would find it. But it was really meant for my roommate because she’s the one that, the green ducks that they had seen the green ducks in the Jeep Parade, and it was her dad’s birthday. So I brought the green duck home to her and I gave it to her and to us, it was just this sweet little note from the other side that our parents are still around.

Jim Harold (01:22:56):

Oh, that is sweet. And it really is a thing where I believe that our loved ones leave signs and they leave signs that they know we will understand. I do believe that. I’m not saying that we pick up on everything, but I do believe, and it’s happened to me, and I know it’s happened to many people out there listening and people have called in, and I think that they kind of figure out, oh, they’ll get this, and they send the sign that you need. And I think it’s so cool. 

Jamie (CO) (01:23:26):

I’ve never found anything in that little cubby space. I check now on a regular basis, haven’t found anything since then. And the fact that it was a green duck just really solidifies for us that it was our parents.

Jim Harold (01:23:37):

Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for sharing this very personal story.

Jamie (CO) (01:23:41):

Thank you. I appreciate the time.

Jim Harold (01:23:43):

I hope you enjoyed those Campfire stories. And we have a very special spooky shout out for Christie. She had emailed me saying, on February 15th, I’ll be 70 years old. She says, she tells people she lived through the sixties and now she’s lived through her sixties. She faithfully listens and looks forward to the new episodes of Campfire every week. She says, if I need a shot of spooky, I’ll listen again to an episode I’ve already heard. So Christie, happy birthday, 70 years young. Thank you so much for listening and so glad to have you as a part of our great Campfire community. And if you are interested in a personalized video, shout out for someone. I would suggest you check out my cameo at cameo.com/the Jim Herrell. That’s e o.com/the Jim Herald. We keep it very affordable. I see people over there charging outrageous amounts of money, and I guess they could do it because they’re big celebrities.

(01:24:48):

I’m not a big celebrity and I do not charge a lot of money. We try to make it very affordable. And we do birthdays, anniversaries, congratulations. And I just love doing it. And it also helps support shows like this one. So it’s C A M E O.com/thejimharold – cameo.com/theJimHarold, and we would appreciate it if you would check it out. Secondly, I want to tell you about our mausoleum of merch. Dar has been putting up some great new designs. She’s been putting up some mugs. She did a great St. Patrick’s Design. Kiss Me, I’m Spooky, and you can find that over at Jim Harold dot com/merch. Just click on the Etsy option, and that’s where you’ll find all of that. We would appreciate that very much. Also, my Plus Club, if you are a fan of this show and want to listen to that back catalog log along with tons of other content, you can go to JimHaroldplus.com, click on the banner and get all the details. We’d appreciate it very much, and please also support our sponsors. We thank you. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe and stay spooky. Bye-Bye.

Announcer (01:26:03):

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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