Possessions, a ghost hunt gone wrong and much more strangeness on this edition of Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

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

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you. You are in the right place if you want to hear spooky stories. Could be UFOs, could be ghosts, could be creepy cryptid creatures, but whatever it is, these are true stories from real folks about strange things that have happened to them. Whether you’re new or you’ve been listening for years, welcome to the show today.

I am so appreciative, I have a free gift for you, and we’ve had hundreds of people take advantage of this – and it really is zero dollars, zero euros, or whatever currency you have in the place where you happen to live. And that is a free Campfire mini eBook. We’ve done five books and we plan more. It’s been a few years, but they’re still great books. So what we did was compiled 10 of our favorite stories from those books into a little mini eBook that you can download and own for yourself. All you have to do is go over to jimharold.com and click on the orange button there, go through the steps, and you will be able to download your very own copy, a PDF of an eBook of 10 favorite Campfire stories from my book. Jimharold.com, click on that orange button, and you will soon have your book once you go through those steps. It’s very easy to do, and we’ve had people say, “Hey, I love the mini eBook. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.”

So we appreciate you, and hope you like that little token of appreciation. And I’m very appreciative for today’s storytellers… and here’s the first story.

Next up on the Campfire is JAK from Staffordshire, UK. We always love to hear from our callers in the UK. We get such great support there. I was being interviewed for something in the UK yesterday and I told the journalist, “Shout out to the UK,” because you guys are great. We get so many callers and supporters from there. We appreciate it. JAK is going to tell us about a ghost hunt he went on and some strangeness that ensued. JAK, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

JAK: Hi Jim, thanks for having me. Firstly, I think I need to say that I absolutely adore my wife and I would never speak out of turn to her. That sounds really random, but it will make sense. Me and my wife went on a ghost hunt at a very old pub in our local area. This pub dates back to about the 17th century, and they literally specialize in doing ghost hunts there. It’s no longer used as a public house. We’ve done lots of ghost hunts before, and it’s always been fantastic experiences.

But this one, we first started down into the cellar and we did a Ouija board. It was actually the first time I’d ever done a Ouija board. It was great. A lot of things were happening, things were flying about the room, and there was a lot of references to individuals in the room, which was great. The pub itself is split over three to four floors, so we then went up to the top floor. I was standing round there and I just got this really weird sensation. I’ve always been able to latch on to energies in rooms and areas. My wife can see certain things, but she’s straining herself further, if that makes sense.

We had a guide with us, and I said to the lady, “I’m getting something mental here. Is there anything in this room?” She was like, “Yeah, there is, actually.” Basically, there was a girl that was very happy to see me. The lady started to get her phone out and film, and on the actual footage, there’s orbs around me. Basically, the guide was a medium and she said this girl wanted to hold my hand, that she felt really protected by me. I thought that was really quite nice. We spent about a half an hour to an hour up there, and this girl followed me around the entire floor. A lot of people in our groups were also mediums, and they all picked up on it as well, saying, “She feels safe with you. She’s constantly next to you.”

We then all went back downstairs and we had a tea and coffee break, and people who weren’t in our group, who hadn’t spoken to our group – we were all separated – were coming up to me and saying, “Ooh, you’ve got a friend, then, haven’t you?” This girl had basically followed us downstairs and was sat with me in the area where we were all sat. There were a few people who’d done these tours in that particular pub before, and they all said that they’d never seen this girl leave that floor, which I thought was quite interesting.

Next, we go upstairs into this horrible, absolutely horrible room. The energy was just – I didn’t want to be there. There were people milling around, and all of a sudden this atmosphere sort of disappeared, and it became almost flat. There was nothing really exciting going on. To be quite honest, I got a little bit bored. There was a mirror in the room, and something told me to go to this mirror. I had a torch in my pocket, so I thought, “I’m going to try some mirror scrying.” I’d never done it before. I’ve seen people say what to do and everything, so I thought, “Let’s have a butcher’s at this. Let’s see if anything happens.”

I can honestly say I have never been so scared in all my life. I looked into this mirror, and I was staring at myself with this torch, and all of a sudden my face slowly merged into this old man’s.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

JAK: It was so real, I could even see the white hairs out of his nostrils. At this point, I sort of gasped because I was absolutely petrified. I dropped my torch, jumped back, and my wife and the same guide who’d been talking to us about the girl came running in like, “Everything okay?” I was like, “Yeah, but I’ve just witnessed this.” I was a bit shook up. Anyway, the guide went to have a look and said, “I’ve never heard of it in that mirror. I’ve heard of it in another before, but whatever.”

My wife came up to me and she said, “You’re different.” I looked at her, and I can still remember this to this day – I hated her.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man!

JAK: I wanted her to shut up. I looked at her viciously and I just said, “Shut up.” I thought, “What a stupid girl to be saying that to me.” And that is my wife, and like I said at the start, I’ve never spoken like that to my wife. I love her to pieces and I would never dream of talking to anybody like that, let alone my wife. But I felt this hatred. I was angry.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think you were kind of possessed?

JAK: Well, we went into another room then, and again, this was all flat. Some people suggested, “Let’s do a human pendulum.” I volunteered to get in the middle because I enjoy doing the human pendulum, and this pendulum apparently went on for about 5 to 10 minutes. I only remember about 30 seconds of it. And that 30 seconds is one of the tour guides shaking my shoulders and saying, “JAK, are you okay? We need to stop.”

As I was coming around – I’m 6’2”. I’ve got a 54-inch shoulder width. I’m a big guy, and I was tense. My fists were clenched by my waist, and I was angry. I was deep breathing. I hated absolutely everybody in that room. I’d never met these people. I get on with everybody. I’m a happy-go-lucky sort of person. And everybody in that room shouldn’t have been there, and I was so angry that they were there. The tour guide was like, “Are you okay?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m fine,” but I was also battling with this internal thought of, “No, get the hell out of here! I don’t know why we’re all here. This is stupid. What are we doing?” But not in a scared sense; more of a “Get the hell out, I don’t want you here.” I was battling with this internally.

Again, we went back down, we had tea and coffee, and the girl that followed had disappeared. One of the people said that she was actually up on the rafters, sat watching, and she wouldn’t come near me, and they didn’t really know why. There was a bit of a joke going, “Maybe you’ve upset her, maybe she’s jealous of the wife.” We didn’t really put anything together. It was one of those things.

Then we went up to this other floor, and a couple tour guides decided, “I know, let’s all separate. Let’s all go sit in rooms on our own.” Jim, I’ve got to be honest; I had a panic attack. We all split up. We all had torches. Me and my wife went into one room. There was a long corridor where the tour guides sat down in the corridor. Then there was another group of ladies in the end of the corridor room. So if you come out of our room, turn right, you walk past the tour guides, and then directly ahead is another room full of people.

Me and my wife sat there, and the tour guides counted down from five. They were like, “All torches off and we’ll just see what happens.” I pushed myself up against the wall in a corner, and I think if I could’ve curled up into a ball and cried, I probably would’ve. I’ve never felt so scared about anything. I was physically shaking. I was petrified. My wife’s like, “Are you okay?” I’m like, “No, I’m literally on the verge of tears.” I’m getting a bit emotional thinking about it now. I was that scared, I was on the verge of tears, and I didn’t want to move and I didn’t want my back away from the wall.

When you start these ghost hunts, they do something that they call grounding, and it’s where you imagine a beam of light, like an orb going round you to protect you from spirits, this, that and the other. I’ve always joked, saying that I’ve got a terrible imagination. So if I can’t imagine this spirit ball thing, am I open to the elements? I’ve always been told “No, you’ll be fine.” My wife pulled me onto the bed where was sat and she put her arms round me, and I just sat, sobbing, because I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared.

She basically started to ground herself and include this ball of energy around both of us. As she was chanting about this ball of energy and it was protecting and nothing can get through, and “if there’s anything here, you can’t touch us,” she said she saw this dark shadow rise up from my shoulders, up into the ceiling of this room, and then it sort of floated out rapidly, out of the room, and down the corridor.

Now, we know it went down the corridor because all of a sudden we heard the tour guide say, “Oh my God, have you seen that? What is that?” And then we heard the girls in the room at the end of the corridor start screaming going, “What the hell is that? It’s coming, it’s coming!” And literally the place erupted with screams.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

JAK: At that point I felt amazing. I felt me again. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t scared. We went and spoke to the tour guides saying, “This is what happened. I was physically having a panic attack in there, and then she grounded and this shadow came out of my shoulders.” They tried to play it off as “Yeah, okay,” but you could see them looking at each other like, “What the hell has just happened?”

They took me outside and started doing Reiki and everything to cleanse me, but yeah, that was that. I think – well, I’m pretty sure – that this evil spirit possessed me. Looking into the history of the building, the girl that latched herself on to me was actually abused by the male that we think possessed me. So we think that because this girl felt safe by me, protected by me, that this male spirit / dark energy wanted to, I don’t know, mess with me, mess with the girl. I really don’t know.

JIM HAROLD: I’ve got to tell you, what a remarkable, remarkable story. Here’s my question: do you feel at this point discouraged to go on other similar ghost tours? Or you’re like, “Yeah, I want to get more of this, I want to see what’s going on here, I want to experience this again, even though there was some bad stuff to it”? Or is it like, “I never want to do that again”? Where do you fall on that?

JAK: [laughs] It’s taken me a good 12 months to say, “Yeah, I will do another one.” Some of our friends said there’s another one going at that pub, and I looked at my wife and I went, “I can’t go back there. I won’t risk going back there.” It’s funny, actually, because we drive past it quite regularly, and the top floor is where the girl is, and I can always sense this energy around the window. But I would definitely go and do some other ones. That was probably the most interesting, if you could say interesting, one that we’ve done. Usually you get lights turning on and energies and that sort of stuff. That was the scariest one. But I’d definitely do another one. We’re looking at one in a local prison, actually. So yeah, I’d definitely do that, but I’m never going back to that pub again.

JIM HAROLD: Can’t say I blame you. JAK, thanks so much for being a part of the Campfire, and stay spooky.

JAK: Thank you very much.

JIM HAROLD: Beth is on the line from Anchorage, Alaska. We’re so glad to speak with her today. You know, it’s one of those things that I think is really important on the show. We’re not just about the spooky-ooky and the scary, but we’re also about messages from loved ones, and I love these kinds of stories. And Beth has one for us. Beth, welcome to the show. I know you’ve been listening now for almost a couple of years, so thank you very much for that, and tell us what happened.

BETH: Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me. Last October, I had been listening to – I think it was one of your older podcasts. I’m not positive; I’ve listened to a few. But you were interviewing – [laughs]. I’m nervous.

JIM HAROLD: That’s okay.

BETH: The person was interviewing a woman who was talking about signs from your loved ones, and how you think cardinals and butterflies and feathers, that type of thing. Her story was that you should be more specific when asking for a sign and to give them a 48-hour window, and you ask for a specific thing that wouldn’t normally be something you would just see.

My mom passed on a few years ago, and I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a try.” My mom’s name was Jan, so I thought, “Okay, Mom, in 48 hours, I want to see something that says ‘Jan.’” I only know one other person named Jan, so for me, it wasn’t something I see or hear all the time. So the first day goes by. Don’t see anything, don’t hear anything. The next day, I’m scrolling through on Facebook, and on Facebook Marketplace, an ad comes up for a garage sale. And the address was on Jan Marie Street. My mom’s middle name is also Marie.

JIM HAROLD: Oh wow.

BETH: So I thought, “Okay, I’ll take that as my sign.” [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, absolutely. And signs come in a weird way. I thought I got a sign from my mom, who passed – my goodness, it’ll be 10 years this year – and it was weird because I was in a dollar store. We used to have somebody that used to follow the shows, and he would always say I’m a millionaire podcaster, which is kind of funny. I’m a middle class podcaster; I’m not a millionaire podcaster. But anyway, you can see how much of a millionaire – I shop in the dollar store. But I was getting some envelopes for the business.

Anyway, I saw this woman who looked just like my mom, maybe 15 years younger than my mom was when she passed, but she looked just like her. So much so, if this had been another time in my life where I lived in the same area as my mom did and she was alive, I would think it was her. Hairstyle was the same. Glasses were the same. The dress was the same, the way she would dress in jeans and tennis shoes. Even carried herself in the same way. I saw her; her face was close. It wasn’t like a doppelganger or twin, but it was very close. So I thought, “Boy, that’s weird.”

Anyway, I’m done shopping and I get ready to check out, and lo and behold, who’s in front of me but this woman who looks like my mom 15 years younger than she was when she passed. So I’m standing there, just daydreaming or whatever, and the woman turns around and holds up a bottle of Pepsi, I think it was, and said, “Would you open this for me?” Now, I don’t know, I’ve been in a lot of stores over the years – and this is probably, gosh, six or seven years now. My mom had been gone for two or three years, I think, at that point. But I’ve never had that experience before, I’ve never had that experience since. Now, she paid for the – she was at the checkout, so I don’t want to make it seem like this sign was a ghost shoplifter or anything, and I don’t think she was a ghost. But I think that maybe she was put in that position to send a sign to me, you know what I’m saying?

BETH: Yes, definitely.

JIM HAROLD: And I didn’t mean to turn this around to “let’s tell Jim’s story.”

BETH: [laughs] No.

JIM HAROLD: But what I’m saying is that I think people get signs to us in ways that are meaningful to us, and you asking that fulfilled that criteria.

BETH: Yeah, I was so shocked when I saw that. I sent it to my sister and I was like, “Look at this, look at this!”

JIM HAROLD: I know it did for me; I’ve got to believe that it made you feel better.

BETH: It did, it did. I mean, you always hope that they’re there, and I took that as more of a sign that she is.

JIM HAROLD: Beth, you said you had another sign before your mom passed, right?

BETH: Yes. This was during COVID, when we weren’t allowed to visit our loved ones in the hospital. My mom was dying from cancer, and of course, we were all very worried about her.

JIM HAROLD: I’m sorry.

BETH: Thank you. I should’ve started out by saying before this, my dad – he passed a long time ago – always loved model trains. This is a setup for the story – I also do auctions online, and I have apps on my phone that will pop up notifications, telling you when a new auction is coming up.

Well, like I was saying, we were worried about my mom, and I was sitting here at the table and I just asked my dad, “Dad, are you there with her, watching over her?” And a notification for a Lionel Trains auction popped up on my phone. [laughs] I took that, since my dad loved model trains so much – I mean, it happened right after I asked. So I took that that he was there with her when we couldn’t be.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I believe that’s the way it works. Beth, thank you for sharing both of these great signs. Again, as I was telling you offline, I think some people think the loved one appears to you in three dimensions, full-body apparition, and says, “I’m here with you.” And maybe it does work that way for some people. But for a lot of people, I think it works the way it does for both of us. Thanks so much for being a part of the Campfire.

BETH: Thank you, Jim.

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

JIM HAROLD: Next up we have Lindsey from The Chilling Podcast. I was on her show a while back, and she told me a story and I’m like, “You’ve got to come on the Campfire and tell us this story!” So she’s here, and she’s going to tell us this story – and I must say, it is a very sweet story in more ways than one. Lindsey, welcome back to the show, and tell us – this is really a Campfire classic that’s not been on Campfire yet. Tell us what happened. I love this story.

LINDSEY: Awesome. Will do. Small background – I’ll keep it quick, but I come from a family who’s had a lot of experiences. Paranormal and beyond. So it was never a foreign concept for us to talk about things or deal with things. Growing up, when it came to religion, we often speculated as a family – I was raised in a Christian household, but we were weird Christians in the sense that my parents were basically like, “Jesus is an alien.” We would have these bizarre conversations. [laughs] Which made us really oddballs at church. We didn’t quite fit in well with others.

But what it did was opened us up to having these conversations about all sorts of things. What I found with that is that when you do that, if you have faith and religion, which my parents did – but again, they had unique faith – every now and then, my father would go through this strange feeling of “What if it’s not real? What if the Bible, God, Jesus, what if it’s all not real?”

JIM HAROLD: Sure. I think most people of faith have those moments, even the strongest faith. They have their moments of doubt, yes.

LINDSEY: Yeah. So I think when you are constantly talking about these things and questioning things and trying to come up with them in logical ways, I think for my father, it would just make him think to himself, “What if it’s not real?” And my parents have a very strong faith, so for them, that’s a big thing.

One time this happened – my father was a hardworking, blue collar guy. He worked at J&L Steel in Cleveland. He was also a heavy-duty rescue firefighter and dispatcher.

JIM HAROLD: My dad worked at Republic on the other side of the river. [laughs] So there you go.

LINDSEY: There you go. [laughs] Every day – my dad’s kind of a creature of habit – he had his lunch; his lunch was always a sandwich, chips, a pop usually, and he’d always have a dessert, which was either a candy or a box of Cracker Jacks.

On this particular day, he was at work, and he was in a loud space where no one was around, and he said that he said out loud, because he was going through one of his doubts in faith, “God, if you exist, I want proof. I want proof proof, like tangible, real proof. According to the Bible, you could flood the Earth and move mountains and all these things that you can physically do, supposedly. Your son could walk on water and make water out of wine. I’m asking for something, and I want it. If you exist, then I want to have it. And if I don’t get it, then I’m not going to believe anymore.” Now personally, I always thought, “Dad, that’s really crazy and scary.”

JIM HAROLD: That’s pretty audacious, yeah.

LINDSEY: Yes, like, who are you to demand this?

JIM HAROLD: Exactly, “I demand proof!”

LINDSEY: “I want proof!” [laughs] But I think he was really going through one of these doubting things, and I think he was feeling pretty hopeless. I wouldn’t do that; if you do believe in God in any context, that’s frightening. But he was willing to. So on that very day, he says that – he said he said it out loud – he sits down to have his lunch. He has his sandwich, he has his chips, he has his pop, and now it’s time for Cracker Jacks. Growing up as a kid, Cracker Jacks were a staple in my house. If you don’t know what they are, basically it’s caramel corn with peanuts, and it’s in a cardboard box very similar to a box of macaroni and cheese.

JIM HAROLD: I think they’re in pouches now. I think they’ve changed that too.

LINDSEY: Are they in pouches?

JIM HAROLD: I think maybe.

LINDSEY: That’s how you know you’re getting old. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, what are they going to change next? This is ridiculous. But go ahead.

LINDSEY: They’re hanging Cracker Jacks! But the Cracker Jacks were in, back then, a cardboard box, and then the box was sealed with this paper. Not quite wax paper, but like a thin coat of paper. And the reason I’m explaining this is there’s really no way to access a box of Cracker Jacks, and once you open it – so let’s say someone opened it and then tried to reseal it – they go stale. They taste different. So when you opened a box of Cracker Jacks, if you tried to save it for later, it was never good. The reason I’m pointing this out is just to show you that it’s a very sealed thing. It’s cardboard sealed in this paper, hard to open.

So my dad opens his Cracker Jack box and he’s eating his Cracker Jacks, and even though he was a grown man, he loved his Cracker Jack prizes. The man loved them. He would look forward to every time what prize he would get. They’re all pretty similar. You might get a whistle or a little toy or a compass, but they’re all made of plastic. So he goes to open his Cracker Jack prize, and when he does, out comes a medallion. It’s made of plastic, this reddish-orange, but it’s a medallion.

And pressed into the medallion is a dove holding an olive branch. Ooh, it just gives me goosebumps. My father holds it in his hand – and this is on the very day he asked God for a sign – and he’s thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I have this.” So he brings it home, he shows my mom, he shows us, and this becomes a bit of you would say family folklore. If I had friends come over to my house – this is going into my teenage years – I would tell them the story of what my dad said and what he got. He kept it in his wallet, and he would show it to my friends. I mean, everyone was like, “This is wild.”

So, one day as a family, we happen to be in Columbus, Ohio, I believe is where it was, and there was a Cracker Jack museum. We go to the museum, and as a family, we say, “This is it. We’re going to finally see, when was this made? When did they produce this?” Because it’s pretty remarkable to get it on the very day that you’d make this request, but we’d be curious to see, did it get made that year? Was it an old prize? It just seemed a strange thing to get a religious symbol in a Cracker Jack box. My dad had been getting Cracker Jacks at that point for probably 45 years; he’d never seen anything like that.

So we go into the museum, and they had every prize you could ever imagine laid out behind glass, and you can look at them all. They have dates and what they are and all this information. As a family, we are just scanning for this thing, and my dad’s holding it, looking, looking, looking. We can’t find it. One worker comes over and I think can see that we are looking, and the person’s like, “Can I help you?” We explain, “We’re trying to find this Cracker Jack prize to see when it was made.” The worker goes, “I’ve been here for a while, but I’ve never seen that. But I don’t know as much. Let me go get” – I’m assuming it’s their manager or something.

Out comes the Neo Maxi Zoom Dweebie of Cracker Jack prizes. This person knows everything about Cracker Jacks – the history, everything. So this person comes out, and you can tell is like, “Oh, this is going to be fun, a little challenge for me. What’s the prize?” My dad hands it to this person. The person looks at it, and they just look it over and they flip it over and look at the back, and flip it over again, and they go, “Yeah, this is a Cracker Jack prize, but the thing is, we’re not allowed to make religious symbols of any kind. We’ve never made this.”

As a family, we were like, “What?” He goes, “Clearly, looking at this, this looks like it’s made by us. This looks like a Cracker Jack prize. But in the history of Cracker Jack, we have never made a religious item, and we wouldn’t be allowed to.”

JIM HAROLD: Sure, because people of different faiths or no faith love Cracker Jacks.

LINDSEY: So you can’t do that. And he just said, “I have no logical explanation as to how this got into your Cracker Jack box, because we print these on big machines. These are made in numbers of prints, so how did you get it? I don’t know.”

JIM HAROLD: Two things. It appears that Cracker Jacks are still sold in boxes in some cases, so I stand corrected. Two, if you remember – I remember when I was a kid back in 1912 and getting these [laughs], they were sealed in a paper. So they weren’t just loose. It’s not like it could’ve just fallen in. It would’ve had to have been put inside the paper, and then you rip the paper open, because obviously they want to keep the little pieces of plastic separate from the food content. So I only have one explanation: God put it there. In fact, as soon as you said a dove with an olive branch – let’s face it, kids are pretty crass. They want something fun, they want something hip, they want something exciting. They’d be like, “What is this?”, without the context of faith or whatever. Yeah, wow.

LINDSEY: And I remember the last thing that guy said, which I thought was really – we talked with him for a while and then we told him the story, and he said, “Here’s the thing. Even if a worker somehow slipped this as a one-off in, this is printed by our machines. You can’t make a one-off of this plastic printed thing. Even if somebody tried to slip you something – if it was a medal medallion, whatever, somebody somehow did that. But this is printed and made by Cracker Jack, except we don’t make one-offs.” He said, “This is a miracle,” and he put it back in my dad’s hand. He goes, “You’re holding a miracle.”

JIM HAROLD: The miracle in the Cracker Jack box.

LINDSEY: [laughs] Yes.

JIM HAROLD: Lindsey, great story. I’ll be honest with you, I figure there are going to be some people who hear this and go, “I’m not tuning in to a church service!” It’s like, no, but our show is about the supernatural, and this strikes me as a very supernatural occurrence. That doesn’t mean anybody’s preaching to you or anything, but Lindsey’s father had what she explains as a supernatural experience. I think it’s incredibly appropriate for the show.

And Lindsey, another thing that is appropriate is if people check out your podcast. Give us about a minute, what it is and where they can find it.

LINDSEY: Awesome. Yes, you can find my podcast – it’s called The Chilling Podcast, and you can find it at thechillingpodcast.com, on Spotify, Apple, just about anywhere you listen. That, my friends, is a very scary story. It’s a 13-part serialized podcast about a haunting that I lived through, full of eyewitness testimony, insights from demonologists, parapsychologists. I’ve been told it’s one of the scariest stories people have ever heard, and it’s growing. It’s been Top 7 in 10 countries. It’s just really taking off. So if you’re looking for something scary and supernatural, please check out The Chilling Podcast.

JIM HAROLD: Lindsey, tanks for being on the show, sharing a great story, and stay spooky.

LINDSEY: Same to you. Bye.

JIM HAROLD: Kelsey is on the line from East Tennessee, and we’re so glad to have her on the show. She’s going to take us back to 2010. She says she was never someone who was interested in the paranormal, but some of the events she’s going to tell us about changed that. Kelsey, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us today.

KELSEY: Thank you, Jim. Happy to be here.

JIM HAROLD: So tell us what happened.

KELSEY: I was in high school in 2010. On the border of the Ohio River is where this story took place. I was at my boyfriend’s house at the time. It was getting to be dark outside, and I had stepped out onto their front porch because, if I’m remembering correctly, someone was trying to come and drop something off to me. So I was standing outside waiting for this person. My partner lived in this great big house. It was beautiful, and it was also very haunted, but that’s a story for another time. This actually has nothing to do with the house at all. But I was standing out front, and they had a very long driveway with the classic round hedges that lined the driveway.

I was standing out there and just waiting for this person to bring me something, and as I was standing there, I looked over into these bushes that lined the driveway. It was about 20 feet from me, so I could see it really well, and between these bushes, out of nowhere, rose a very strange ball of light. I feel like it was about the size of a volleyball from where I was standing. I have never seen anything before or since then that I can’t explain, but this ball of light rose up about three feet, just above the bush line. Rose up about three feet in the air and just hovered there for a little bit. It was kind of a whitish-gold light.

I don’t remember being scared. I don’t remember having any emotional feeling towards it except, “What am I looking at?” I felt very calm, but very strange. It seemed to hover there for 15-20 seconds, and I watched it and I didn’t move, and out of nowhere, it shot right up into the sky. Again, this was 2010. I did not know about any kind of drones or anything like that. It was dusk, so it wasn’t completely dark outside, but it wasn’t very light. Maybe just a streetlamp on nearby. I just stood there, dumbfounded, for a while. I couldn’t figure out what I had seen.

I went back inside and I must’ve had a very strange look on my face, because when I walked back into the house, my partner’s parents were like, “Are you okay?” I couldn’t even make words to them to verbalize what I had experienced and what I had seen. My boyfriend’s father was very, very into watching the sky and things like that at the time, so I explained to him, when I finally could make words, what I had seen, and he was like, “I’m sorry, come again?” He pulled me outside and was like, “Show me exactly where you saw that.”

I never experienced anything like that before that or since then. But the strange thing about it to me was it seemed really large. Again, it seemed to be roughly volleyball-sized and perfectly round. And spherical, like I feel like I could sense the depth of it. It didn’t appear as a flat light. And with no visible source to this thing, and no one else around. The street was dead quiet. There was no one out and about. It was very strange.

JIM HAROLD: That is strange. In the subsequent years, have you developed any theories on what this might’ve been?

KELSEY: I honestly have no idea. Obviously, after I witnessed that and took some time to digest it – and especially listening to this show and hearing other people’s accounts that feel really similar, since that has happened, I have heard of so many stories where folks witness a hovering orb of light that then shoots back up into the sky with no physical source. So yeah, I wonder. I have no idea.

JIM HAROLD: A lot of people would think something in the sky is more of a craft, but you didn’t get any sense it was a craft? It sounds like it was more of an energy of some type?

KELSEY: Yeah. I don’t know if I would describe it as sentient. It didn’t react to anything and it didn’t move in a way that was responding to anything specific. It just hovered for a bit. It came out of nowhere, just rose up, hovered around for a little bit, and then shot right back up. I have no idea.

JIM HAROLD: I hate to tell you, I don’t either. [laughs] But I can say this: it really does add to the list of stories we’ve had. We had one where a ball of light – you may have heard it – was following a woman around.

KELSEY: Yes, I remember hearing that one and getting chill bumps, but then wondering – yeah, that seeming sentient and its ability to follow or move in a specific direction like that. I don’t know.

JIM HAROLD: Well, if it ever happens again or if you ever figure it out, please let us know. I know you also talked about that house that was haunted, so please come back on the show and tell us about that.

KELSEY: Absolutely.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks so much for being on the show, Kelsey, and stay spooky!

KELSEY: Stay spooky, Jim.

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JIM HAROLD: You know, I’ve been loving this segment we’ve been doing with other podcasters about their own stories of the supernatural. It’s a lot of fun to catch up with folks and see that really, the supernatural impacts everybody – even true crime podcasters. Today we’ve got two great podcasters with us, Tim and Lance from Crawlspace and Crawlspace Media, and they both have supernatural stories they would like to share with us. We’re so glad to have them on the show. Tim and Lance, welcome to the program today.

TIM: Hey, Jim. How are you? Thanks for having us on.

JIM HAROLD: I’m doing well. I’ve always found that true crime can be scarier than actually the spooky stories. But that’s kind of our stock and trade here, the spooky stories. Tim, do you want to go first with yours?

TIM: Sure. We don’t get into this much, because with the crime stuff, we’ve almost got to stay away from it, you know?

JIM HAROLD: Sure.

TIM: It’s hard. So we’ve never shared this on our shows, but years ago, I want to say 2009, I had moved into a new apartment. It was a condo, it had an owner and everything that wasn’t me. My girlfriend at the time and I and our dogs moved in. Very soon after we got there, unpacked and everything, we started hearing doorbells frequently. We had two doors, and it was like a townhouse thing, so there were a couple of stairways. You’ve got one down by the garage, there’s one thing, and there was one on the other side. There were doorbells on both doors, so if someone rang the doorbell, it was someone at one of those doors. When the doorbells started ringing, we would check the doors, and there was never anybody there. This went on for a couple of weeks.

It got so frequent that we wouldn’t even move when the doorbell would ring. We just would ignore it completely. I remember one time, it was relentless. It was like 10 times in a row. I was like, “Screw it, I’m going down there.” [laughs] I went down one flight and I was like, “Is someone there?” And it rang three times in a row – ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong! – like that. I was like, “Oh, I guess someone’s there this time.” I went down there and there was nobody there.

JIM HAROLD: What do you think was behind it? Do you guys have a theory? Was there somebody who lived there before that was displeased with you guys? Did any theories or anything come forth on that?

TIM: Yeah, I thought for sure this was a kid ding-dong ditch scenario at first. Then after that point, we messaged the owners of the condo, and they said, “No, never heard of anything crazy like that. It’s probably old pipes or something like that.”

But then we were lying in bed one evening with the dogs as well, and we heard a growl in the bedroom. I’m not kidding. It was like [growls menacingly], like that.

JIM HAROLD: Ooh.

LANCE: It’s the pipes!

TIM: We were like, “What the heck was that?” But the dogs went loco. They just started barking at the walls, and we were like, “What the heck is going on?” Then there was a scent that appeared not long later in the hallway. Smelt of sulfur.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man, it’s like devil time now. It’s smelling of sulfur. Fire and brimstone.

TIM: At that point, I spoke to a psychic that we had spoken with in the past, someone that I believe in. She’s said some amazing things in the past to me. I went there, not telling her about this, but assuming she would know. And like the very first thing she said to me, she was like, “Who’s doing the ghost hunting? Cut the s***!” [laughs] I’m like, okay, all right.

She’s like, “Don’t create this stuff. There’s enough scary stuff out there. Don’t go looking for it. If you find stuff, just bring a Bible into your house.” She actually gave several specific examples, like, “Put an iron cross in a red bag and hang that above your doorway,” things like that. So I actually did that stuff, brought a Bible into the apartment. And abruptly gone. The noises, doorbells stopped completely, really abruptly right at that point.

JIM HAROLD: Wow, so the Bible and these other talismans and things that she prescribed, it worked.

TIM: I guess so. Oddly enough, yeah, it did. It stopped.

JIM HAROLD: Well, I’ve heard that before. Of all the stories we’ve done on Campfire, people have done different things. I’ve heard something as simple as – I interviewed one author one time who’d written like 80 books on the paranormal, Brad Steiger, who’s since passed, but he told me one time he was working on something, and he felt that there was some kind of spirit bugging him. He literally just said, “Get out of here! I’m trying to do some work!” And it left. So I do think that they have a reaction to what we do. That doesn’t mean – these people who provoke ghosts and stuff, I’m not a big fan of that, but if something’s invading our space in an unpleasant way, I think we have every right to try to get it to shoo away. So yeah, glad that it listened.

I don’t know if you were a believer before or after that, but did that change your viewpoint on the supernatural or the paranormal in any way?

TIM: I would say I was a believer then, and only since then did I go the other way to really not thinking that stuff was real. Now I’m kind of back, though. I think it’s real. I don’t know what the hell that was, but I am at least grateful that it stopped.

JIM HAROLD: Glad to have you back. [laughs]

TIM: Thank you. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Lance has a story, too. Lance, can you tell us your spooky story?

LANCE: Yes, sir, and thank you so much for having us on. Like Tim said, we don’t get a chance to talk about these things on our regular show. It’s all, for the most part, true crime, so it’s really refreshing to do this, and fun, because these stories do provoke that bit of fear, that anxiety. Mine does not have anything to do with growls or anything of that sort; it’s about a haunted drawer.

JIM HAROLD: A haunted drawer, cool. Tell us about it.

LANCE: I never came from a place where I truly believed in anything paranormal. I really wanted to, but I just had never seen anything. I would tell myself, “If I see something, then obviously I’ll believe it, because I’m not going to doubt myself as long as what I’m seeing is tangible and obvious to me.” Years go by in my life where something would happen and I could explain it away.

But recently, in the past three years, my girlfriend and I moved to a new house, and the house was actually on the map in like 1790. It’s got an official date of 1830. So this is an old colonial-style New England home. We loved it. The second we walked in, we just felt a good energy here. Never had any problems with it. Actually made up some funny stories that it was haunted just to keep the engagement going as we were moving in, but there was nothing that was ever actually happening here. A door would kind of close, but then we’d realize, the house is kind of tilted. Of course the door is kind of closing.

About maybe nine months ago or so, my girlfriend went on a business trip, and I was home alone with the dog. There were other things going on, not professionally, but personally. I was sort of in this space in my head that wasn’t typically where I’m at. Wasn’t like I was in a bad space, but when she was gone, I was talking to myself, and I was making things harder than they needed to be. I needed to just take a step back.

JIM HAROLD: You were just having a bad few days, it seems like.

LANCE: A bad few days. There was some anxiety building up for no reason. I ended up taking a step back and I’m like, “All right” – and I’m saying all this out loud in the house – “I’m going to go for a run. I’m going to go to the gym, go for a run, try to sweat it out.” I went to the gym, went for a run, came back, and I’m sweaty. I’m going to make dinner, but I’m going to shower first. I cross through the living room, I cross through where my girlfriend’s office is, and in the office there’s this two-drawered bureau, a small one. It probably comes up to my waist, and she uses it for files. So it’s like a filing cabinet slash old bureau, or could be used as a bureau. She has that right next to the door that goes upstairs.

I cross by there, I go upstairs, I take a shower, clean up, get dressed, come downstairs, and I felt a wash go through me, like a bit of a chill. Didn’t think a thing about it. I turn the corner to cross through her office again and the drawer’s open. The bottom drawer of the desk is open. I was like, “That’s weird. I didn’t see that open when I went upstairs.” So I shut it, and as I shut it, the wheel on the track goes over a little bump in the back, like a little divot, so it locks in place. So I shut it and I pushed it and I tried to open it, and it needs a little bit of a pull to get over that little divot. Then I left it and it slowly slides out maybe a couple of inches and stops. This thing was fully out when I walked by.

I wouldn’t have missed it going up the stairs because you would bump into it. It would block where you’re walking. So I shut it again. When we had moved there and I put that desk there, I put little shims underneath, so it was level. It was definitely level. Didn’t really think too much. I was like, “That’s weird, but maybe I bumped it going by. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe this, maybe that.”

So I make dinner and it’s still rattling around in the back of my head. I make dinner, take the dog out, come back in, going to sit down, probably going to do something on the computer. So I want to take my contacts out. I walk past the drawer again, past the office, go upstairs, take my contacts out, and as I’m coming downstairs, I see in my head, clearly, the drawer open. It just pops in my head. We can swear on this show, right?

JIM HAROLD: Go ahead.

LANCE: In my head, I see it, and I say to myself, “That f****** drawer is wide open. I know it.” And I turn the corner and it’s open. I’ve never had a moment in my life where I was standing there, completely astounded, with waves of chills going through my body. I was like, “This is actually happening.” I shut it, and I texted my girlfriend, because she was texting me at the time, and I said, “Have you ever had a moment where the bottom drawer on your filing cabinet in your office slides open?” She was like, “What are you talking about? No, never.” I was like, “Because it was open twice.” She was like, “Are you screwing around with me?” I said, “No.”

As I’m in the living room, as I look at the lights on the living room wall flickering, she says in her text, “Every time you go away, the lights in the living room flicker.” And I was like, “The lights in the living room are flickering right now!” I went over and adjusted the dimmer. Even as I’m talking about it now, I’m getting those chills again. I adjust the dimmer and they stop flickering, and it’s never happened since. But that is the only thing in my life that’s been so tangible – like a drawer, I touch it, push it back in, the lights are flickering.

JIM HAROLD: Is it possible that the spirit or the ghost or whatever it is likes you guys better as a couple? Because she goes away and weird stuff happens, you go away and weird stuff happens to her. So basically, they’re just saying they like you as a couple, but they don’t care for you so much individually. [laughs]

LANCE: We’ve never felt like a bad presence here. We’ve only felt a positive presence. And I really feel like they like the whole unity of myself, her, and the dog. The dog gets anxious when we’re not together too. As if he was being instructed, he’ll try to find her to bring her in the room if I’m in the room and vice versa. So we just have this theory that maybe there’s something in this house that always had a family type presence and likes that family type unity when it can happen. But also, it understands when we have to go away. I don’t think that would’ve happened if I wasn’t having increasing anxiety.

JIM HAROLD: It was like a chemical reaction, almost, the two things together.

LANCE: Yeah, and it was maybe in a reassuring way, like, “You’re being looked out for” or something.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, you’re not alone. Truly not alone. Those are great stories. We’ve had haunted recliners on this show. We had a disembodied haunted hand not very long ago. Multiple haunted beds. But we’ve never had a haunted drawer, and I don’t know if we’ve had a haunted doorbell before. Very interesting. But even more interesting – Tim and Lance are podcasters extraordinaire, and Tim, why don’t you tell us about Crawlspace and Crawlspace Media, what it is, and where we can find it?

TIM: Sure. You can find it at crawlspace-media.com. We do a bunch of podcasts, mostly true crime and mystery shows. We have covered missing people for years on one of our other podcasts called Missing. Crawlspace, you will find a wider variety of crime stories and sometimes just cultural moments or cultural mysteries, if you will, like a lost time capsule or something like that. So we’ll get a little lighter at times as well. But yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

JIM HAROLD: And where can people find Crawlspace, one more time, and all your various shows?

TIM: Check out the site at crawlspace-media.com or on your favorite podcatcher.

JIM HAROLD: Well, folks, if you’ve been listening to me for a long time, you know I’m a big fan of true crime, so make sure to check out Crawlspace and Crawlspace Media. Tim and Lance, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire tonight.

TIM: Thank you.

LANCE: Thank you. Fantastic. Thanks for having us.

JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is sponsored by BetterHelp, and we’re so glad to have them on board. You know, getting to know yourself can be a lifelong process, especially because we’re always growing and changing. I’ve got to be honest with you; I don’t think that I really, truly understood myself till my forties and early fifties. I’m in my early fifties now, and I finally think I kind of understand myself. I’m sure in future years, I’ll learn even more about myself. And that’s sometimes where therapy can come in. It’s all about deepening your self-awareness and understanding, because sometimes we don’t know what we want or why we react the way we do until we talk through things. And BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who can take you on that journey of self-discovery from wherever you are.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Suzanne is on the line from Virginia. She’s been listening for a couple of years. So glad that she has. And she’s here now, and she’s going to tell us about a haunted motel room. Suzanne, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

SUZANNE: Hey, Jim. This took place in 2018. I’ve got two kids. My daughter’s 13 now. If I remember correctly, I think she was like nine, and it was her first softball tournament. I thought we would make it into a mommy/daughter trip, so we coordinated all of that. It was going to be a two-day tournament. So we went and checked into the hotel. It was a Days Inn in New Market, Virginia. It’s right outside of Harrisonburg. So we checked in and everything, and we did the full day of the tournament. It was really hot and humid that day. We were really exhausted by the time we came in from eating dinner that night after the first day of the tournament, so we were asleep by like 8 o’clock. We were done.

At between two to three, my daughter gasped really loud and sat up in the bed, and I did as well because we heard a big crash, like a boom! It was so strong that it shook the room. It shook the windows. I specifically remember that. I calmed my daughter down, laid her back down, and she was half-asleep anyways. So she went right back to sleep. But I was like, “What is that?” It sounded like something hit the building. It literally sounded like a semitruck hit the building.

I got up to look out the window, thinking I would see emergency vehicles or people about or whatever – that wasn’t the case. It was kind of eerie because it was a foggy night, and there weren’t that many people in the hotel, so it was kind of empty. It was just quiet. I’m looking out the window thinking, “What in the world? Maybe it was on the other side of the building, but something hit this hotel.”

I’m sitting there trying to look out, and I start hearing men’s voices. I heard men’s voices and I thought, “Okay, good, there’s somebody out here, because I’m sure somebody’s got to be hurt.” I could hear muffled talking in the stairwell, and we were in a corner room, so you had to go up the stairs and turn to the left, and we were right there in that corner room. I thought, “Maybe they’re just coming in from a late night of carousing,” because they were rambunctious. I don’t remember any female voices. It was just some rambunctious men. That’s what it sounded like to me at first.

I’m continuing to look out the window, trying to figure this out, and I thought to myself, “This is just so strange.” I’m listening to these voices and I decide to go sit on the edge of the bed and listen to see if I can hear what they’re saying. I couldn’t make it out. About that time, I started hearing something above me, like something on the roof. The problem is, we were on the top level. There’s nothing up there except a roof.

About that time, I’m listening really intently, and the noise starts getting louder and louder and louder, and I could hear gunshots and I could hear booms and I could hear men giving commands, one man in particular. The other men were yelling at each other, and it sounded like somebody was pulling or pushing something big. And it sounded like it was right above me.

JIM HAROLD: It sounds like a warzone.

SUZANNE: Yes. I’m looking at the ceiling thinking, “This is crazy.” About that time, it dawned on me, like, “Oh my gosh, I think I’m experiencing a residual haunting.” I was super fascinated. I wasn’t even afraid. I wasn’t afraid at all. I was just more fascinated. About the time of the height of the noise and the voices, it began to fade away. It was going from the south to the north. This hotel is right off of Highway 81, Interstate 81, and along Interstate 81 in this area is exactly where the Confederate soldiers and the Union soldiers were fighting at the Battle of New Market.

And the crazy thing is, I remember thinking to myself, “Why is there a hotel here? This is like sacred ground. This is where they marched, right here.” And right next to the hotel is the Museum of the Confederacy, I believe. It’s a Confederate museum. Interestingly enough, a part of that museum, you can walk out and there’s a house that turned into a makeshift hospital. Between the house and the museum is a huge field. Again, picture it being right next to the hotel. If you’re walking along where I was at the hotel, you would certainly be on that same path. It would go the same way.

Yeah, I don’t know what else to say other than I heard what sounded like a battle. Oh, the Field of Lost Shoes. If anyone’s ever heard of that, it is a movie, and it’s fascinating. It’s a really, really good movie. The Field of Lost Shoes. What happened is in this place during the Confederate and the Union battle, it was raining really, really hard, and there’s this area where it’s nothing but mud, and that’s where a lot of the fighting took place. They found shoes in this field for years and years and years and years afterwards, and they still find stuff out there, even now. So it’s definitely a prime area for hauntings, I guess.

And like I said, I don’t know why anybody would put a hotel right in that place. It seemed kind of weird to me. But nevertheless, that was my story. That’s what happened. It’s nothing super scary. I wasn’t scared, I was fascinated.

JIM HAROLD: It really makes you think about time and how residual hauntings work and those kinds of things, so I think it’s a fascinating story, and one of my favorite kinds of stories. Again, it gets back to that thing that I say probably way too much and people get tired of, but I think the world works in a far more mysterious way than we understand, and it speaks to the question of time, and is everything going on everywhere all at once, kind of like that movie? It does really make you think. It makes you think. Suzanne, thank you so much. I know you have another story; I hope you’ll come back and join us and tell us an angelic story. And thank you for being a part of the Campfire.

SUZANNE: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.

JIM HAROLD: Laura is on the line from Los Angeles, and she has an interesting experience from basically a film set. We love workplace stories, and certainly from the entertainment industry as well. Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

LAURA: Hello, Jim Harold.

JIM HAROLD: Hello! And by the way, I should mention – I forgot to mention this – Laura in her own right is a podcaster and a vlogger. She’s going to tell us about that at the end of the call. But go ahead, Laura.

LAURA: This was around 2013. We were shooting a short film at an abandoned hospital in East LA. Already creepy. There’ve been several things shot there, I think including End of Days, the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Things that are creepy and need a creepy setting. So we were there all day, and it was creepy. The rooms were graffitied, and there was just a lot of crazy energy in there. We were all feeling like it was a wee bit haunted. [laughs] We filmed mostly in the chapel portion of this hospital, which felt pretty normal, but everything else outside of that room felt really dark and just filled with residual weird s***. Sorry, I cursed.

JIM HAROLD: That’s all right. We know what you mean. [laughs]

LAURA: I apologize. I’m trying to not be a potty mouth.

JIM HAROLD: That’s okay.

LAURA: So it was the end of the day, and we were wrapping up. I was tired. My state of mind was tired, but I wasn’t in a bad mood or anything like that. It was just sort of “been a long day.” All of a sudden, I felt overcome with anger. I started to say things that were not things I would normally say. Really angry male energy came out of me, which is unusual for me. I was still aware of what was going on, but I felt controlled by this energy, and the people around me noticed it. It was very odd. I had to run out of the hospital to relieve this feeling.

Somewhere there’s a video of it, because there was a guy there who we were collaborating with who had done some sort of creepy YouTube series, and he was videotaping me, and that upset me because – I don’t know, it was very strange. But he did follow me outside, and I remember him noticing it as well. Once I got outside, I felt better after a while, and I had to go inside and clean up and wrap up. But that’s sort of it. It was a very strange – it was like I was just a little bit possessed, Jim. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: That’s what I was going to say. It sounds like you were kind of possessed. Because when something is making you say things, that’s a frightening feeling because you can’t control it. I know – and I’m sure you’re the same way – you like to be in control of what you say, and to have something like that kind of stuff coming out, that’s got to be spooky, to feel like you’ve lost control, as it were.

LAURA: Absolutely. The history of the place, it makes sense. This was a hospital that – I researched this after the fact – was used predominantly in the ’80s and ’90s, and there was a lot of gang-related trauma and activity associated with that hospital. And East LA was a disparaged part of LA for a long time. So there was just a lot of that kind of energy left over. So it sort of makes sense as to all this angry male energy that I was feeling.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah. Well, that is spooky, but something that folks should check out that is not spooky per se, I wouldn’t say, is your vlog and your podcast and what you do. Give us a minute or two on what you do and where people can find it.

LAURA: Well, it’s a wee bit spooky. I identify as a witch. My co-host and I talk about different witchcraft and spirituality topics and look at them through different lenses. And there’s a visual element as well, so you can watch us as well as listen. It’s called Third Eye Bind, not to be confused with the band Third Eye Blind.

JIM HAROLD: Right. [laughs]

LAURA: So yeah, you can find us normally wherever you listen to all the things you listen to.

JIM HAROLD: Very good. Thank you so much for joining us, Laura. I hope everybody gets to check out the shows, and thank you for sharing this very interesting story.

LAURA: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: TADI is on the line from eastern Washington, and they have – well, a type of story I don’t think we’ve heard on the Campfire in 14 years. It’s about a possession, but maybe something different than what you would expect when you hear that. TADI, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate it very much, and tell us what happened.

TADI: Hi. I used to live in Harrisburg. I used to live in Pennsylvania, and at this time, I took on the responsibilities of taking care of the outside cats. It was this time that I was trying to find them homes, but I was taking on the responsibility of TNRing them so that the cycle wouldn’t continue. While I was doing that, I got to create relationships with different cats. It would stand out to me, because of the environment, which cats would let me hold them or pet them or so forth.

This encounter really took me by surprise because I felt betrayed that I felt this type of energy from someone I was comfortable with. One night, like any other night, I went down the stairs. I had my water jug, I had my tub of food, and I was just doing business, washing out the bowls, filling them. Immediately, I had to go down the stairs, and I feel eyes on me. I scan the street and look at the cars. Is anybody sitting in them? It’s not very uncommon. I didn’t see anything, so I kept going. I keep looking around, just as a second chance in case somebody might want to sneak up on me while I was preoccupied. I’m like, “I’m just going to focus on what I’m doing.”

I then realize that it’s coming from who I call Belladonna. And that is when every single hair on my back stood up, and I was so scared. I wanted to just fly right up those stairs. I was like, “I don’t want to do that because I’d feel guilty, because what about all these cats that I feed?” So I’m standing there, shaking. I’m like, “I don’t know if I can go through with this or not.” But I looked at her, and she was crouching down with all paws at her side, and she just stared at me. Even with those streetlights, she had constant eyeshine. Normally, this is a cat that will meow and tuck her tail up, she’ll stand, she’ll walk. She just stared at me. Typically if you stare at a cat outside too long, they’ll get freaked out and they’ll scamper off, they’ll flee. I felt the opposite way.

JIM HAROLD: So you felt like the cat was almost confronting you.

TADI: No, it just was there and I was watching it.

JIM HAROLD: So did this continue on?

TADI: It did continue on for several days. I somehow managed the courage to continue what I had to do that night. I went upstairs and I was like, to my partner, “I know I sound crazy, but can you just look down there? Is that her?” Sure enough, we looked down there – we were both like, “Yep, energy is off. Doesn’t pass the vibe check. Let’s just shut the door and move on.”

I decided that I would change the feeding schedule to after I got off my night shift in the morning. I pulled in probably about two or three days later, and I realized that she was there, still staring at me. I basically started panicking. I pulled in and I was like, “I have to walk past her now to get upstairs.” It’s an entirely different situation. I double, triple checked everything so that I didn’t have to make a second trip to come down there for something I’d forgotten. I flew up the stairs.

And then it all changed. One day I was down there feeding them, and she came around the corner, and at first I was like, “Ahh…” But I was like, “Wait, no. Her tail is moving, she’s meowing, she’s walking towards me, she’s rubbing against me.” I was like, “Oh my God, what a relief.” I was putting her, and I was like, “What the hell happened?” Oh my gosh, just shaking thinking about it. I was so excited and so relieved that I went up, I got my partner, we petted her, we gave her a bunch of attention. But even that at that moment, we were like, “Something’s wrong. She’s in rough shape.” And that was the last time we ever saw her.

JIM HAROLD: So do you think that something possessed her and then caused her to either run off or die?

TADI: I think whatever this was was crafty, and picking its hooves towards its victim on a dead-end street. This discarded, long-forgotten cat, that was who it chose to suck the life out of. I just happened to be somebody watching.

JIM HAROLD: Well, if people can be possessed, it makes sense that animals could be possessed, potentially, I guess.

TADI: I had always thought that cats were immune to it. You always hear ghost stories like, “My cat kept this spirit away.” But I think that, yes, illness can make people vulnerable to it, so why not animals?

JIM HAROLD: Something to think about. TADI, thank you so much for joining us on the Campfire. I really appreciate it.

TADI: Thanks for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Campfire. I certainly appreciate it, and thank you oh so much. And we have a couple of special shoutouts.

First of all, Mary wants to wish a happy and spooky birthday to her brother, John. Mary writes, “We are fellow Ohioans with you, living in Cincinnati. He and I listen every week, and he is a Premium member.” (Thank you, John!) “His birthday is March 22nd.” Now, we got this just Monday, so it’s a belated birthday , but we do want to wish John a happy birthday. Mary says, “So whenever that works out time-wise to shout out would be excellent. Both of us enjoy your podcast very much. He has listened for a long time and introduced me to your shows. Thanks for presenting such great real stories.” Mary, thank you so much. John, thank you so much. I hope you had the best birthday ever. Thanks for your support, happy birthday, and stay spooky!

And now we’ve got another one. This one is from the UK. Leslie Anne writes, “Hi, Jim! It’s my husband’s birthday on the 26th of March, and we’re both big listeners to your show here in the UK. He got me into your show during lockdown, and I’ve been listening for three years now, and even shared my story on your show. Just wondering if you could do a big shoutout and wish him a happy birthday from me, Leslie Anne. I know he’d appreciate it. Thank you!” You know what, I’m just realizing – Leslie Anne didn’t give me her husband’s name. [laughs] That’s okay. You know who you are. So Leslie Anne’s husband, happy birthday from Leslie Anne, and a happy birthday and a big stay spooky from me. Thank you so much for that.

And thank you again for listening. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, take care. Stay spooky, of course. Bye-bye.

You’ve been listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire. Tune in again next time for more stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things.

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