A young man picks up a very strange but very familliar hitchhiker and a young girl gets a call from a most unexpected person. That’s just the beginning for this week’s 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. So glad to be with you once again, and thank you so much for taking time to listen to our show. We share ghost stories, cryptid creature stories, UFOs stories, just stories of the strange, the unusual, the paranormal, and we’re so glad to have you with us today.

And we’re so glad to have you with us that we’re going to offer you something for free. Just go over to jimharold.com and click on the orange button at the top of the page that says “Click here to get your free Campfire eBook.” What you will get by doing that and signing up to my email newsletter is a PDF of my 10 favorite stories, or 10 of my favorite stories, from our Campfire books. We have five of those out. So it’s basically like a book – it is a book – and it’s for free. It’s a PDF. So go over there and get that over at jimharold.com, and click on that orange button and get your eBook of 10 favorite Campfire stories.

Speaking of favorite Campfire stories, we’ve got some great ones this week, and here they are.

Lauren is on the line from Vancouver Island up in Canada. We’re so glad to have her on the show. We’re getting so many great stories from Canada these days. We love it. Lauren has a story about her grandma and a very special phone call. Lauren?

LAUREN: Yes. This story takes place about 18 years ago. My grandma and I were quite close, but she suffered from dementia and eventually ended up completely losing her mind and couldn’t communicate with anybody. After she died, everyone was craving that connection with her, still, because it felt like she had already been gone for so long.

The day after she died – she ended up passing away on my brother’s 18th birthday, coincidentally. So the day after his birthday, the day after she died, we started getting these phone calls to the house. We had call display at that time, so it would say “Unknown Name” and then just this random string of numbers with really strange area codes. We would answer the phone, and there would be no one there. Just static. Every time the phone would ring, you answer it, you say, “Hello?”, there’s nobody there. My family members all were starting to get a little bit frustrated because it’s like, who keeps calling our house? And this was before the time of people really doing scam calls or prank calls, that kind of thing. We could see that it was a call coming in from somewhere, but there just wasn’t anybody on the line.

We start planning the funeral, and it’s the day of the funeral. My mum put together this really elaborate slideshow presentation, and she had her siblings there to go over the presentation before the funeral actually started. 12-year-old me, I’m making myself some toast and jam, and I sit on the couch, I plunk myself in the living room while they are doing this presentation, and then the phone rings. I hop up right away because I don’t want to disturb them from what they’re working on. Again, I see that it says “Unknown Name” and this random string of numbers, so I hesitated. I thought, “Maybe I’m not going to answer it. It’s probably just no one going to be there.”

Then I thought, “Well, it’s the day of her funeral. Maybe it’s someone calling about the funeral to say that they’re not attending or something like that,” so I do pick it up and I say, “Hello?” and I hear a voice on the other end. It’s very crackly, staticky as well, and it’s very clearly an old woman’s voice. My first initial thought was, “This is probably an older friend or a relative of my grandma’s that’s calling.” I’m like, “Good thing I answered the phone.”

I say hello and the voice says back to me, “Hello, how are you?” I say, “I’m good, thanks. How are you?” She says, “Good, good. How are you?” As soon as she repeated “how are you” to me for the second time, I got this pit in my stomach, and my legs started to go numb. I’m holding my toast and jam in my hands, and I’m starting to tremble a little bit. I said, “Who is this?” She said, “Sweetheart, you know who this is.” And my whole body just got covered in –

JIM HAROLD: You just gave me chills. [laughs] Literally. Wow.

LAUREN: Yeah, it was a really strange experience. I dropped the phone, I dropped my toast and jam on the floor, and I started calling for my mum. I’m like, “Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum!” She’s like, “What? I’m in the middle of this.” I’m like, “Grandma’s on the phone.” She’s like, “What the **** are you talking about?” Oh sorry, I guess I shouldn’t swear.

JIM HAROLD: That’s okay, don’t worry about it. We have a beeper here. [laughs]

LAUREN: [laughs] So she grabs the phone and she says, “Hello?” multiple times and there’s nobody there. She hung up the phone and they carried on with their presentation, and I – oh my goodness, I couldn’t let it go. I was totally awestruck that this had happened. What I did was I looked up on our computer all of the phone numbers that came up on the call display, because I was just convinced – I needed to fix my skeptical mind to see if this was actually a real phone number, if someone was pranking me, or how this all happened.

I looked up all of these phone numbers, and with every area code that came in, it said, “Area code cannot be found. Area code does not exist.” I printed off that little piece of paper to keep with me as my proof that this actually happened. So yeah, that’s my story.

JIM HAROLD: What a great story. And you’re still convinced to this day that was absolutely your grandma.

LAUREN: Absolutely, yeah. My whole family knows all about it. And afterward they’re like, “Why didn’t you keep talking to her?” I’m like, “I don’t know, I got scared!” [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Didn’t know what to say.

LAUREN: Yeah, it freaked me out. I didn’t know what to talk to her about.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think it was a sign that she was okay?

LAUREN: Yeah, I do. There was a real comfort surrounding that experience afterward, where we just felt – particularly for my mum, too – that everything’s okay, she’s back to herself, she’s on the other side, and she just wanted to communicate with us one last time. I do think maybe because of the connection that I had with her – I had never answered the phone any time there were these phone calls. It was always either my brother, my sister, my mom, my dad. That morning was the first time that I had answered the phone. Who knows if the energy was stronger the day of her funeral or if it was because I answered the phone. I don’t know, but I know that every time that it rang before that, there was no one there, and when my mom picked up after me, she said there was no one there.

JIM HAROLD: What an awesome story. Lauren, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire and sharing this tremendous Campfire story.

LAUREN: Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Something that’s really cool is when we can have guests and authors who have been on the shows tune in and basically give their own paranormal experiences, and we have such a person on the line today. Cliff Aguirre joins us. He is the author of three books. We’ve had him on the shows, and we’re so glad to have him on from Massachusetts today. Cliff is going to tell us about really a very, very interesting Campfire story. I’ve not heard one quite like this. Sounds like something out of The Twilight zone, but looks like a lot of fun. Cliff, thank you so much for joining us and please tell us what happened.

CLIFF: Thanks for having me. Like I was telling Jim, I was saying that unless I had two other people in the car with me, I wouldn’t even believe that this story actually happened. I had a friend who died in 1971. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, where I grew up, and I’m going to move forward to 1975. I was riding with two friends, and we were going through Topanga Canyon, which is a canyon that’s north of Los Angeles. We were driving along, and I was sitting in the back seat.

Suddenly we saw a hitchhiker, and this was the time when you could pick up hitchhikers without them killing you. So we picked up this hitchhiker and he climbed in the back seat and sat next to me. I looked at him and I went, “This looks like my friend,” who had died back in 1971. I thought, “What a coincidence.” I was looking at him going, “This guy doesn’t look very well.” We’re driving along and everything. I think he only said a few words, especially when we asked “Where are you going?” or something like this.

So we’re driving along. We get to this one corner where we have to slow down. I can’t remember the reason why we had to slow down. He opens the door without the car coming to a complete stop, jumps out of the car, slams the door, and then we stop the car, we all three turn around to look out the back window to see what in the world he’s doing, and he’s nowhere to be seen.

JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Wow. Did he talk at all? Did you guys speak with him? Did he say anything?

CLIFF: I think he just said a few brief words like where he was going, something like that. But other than that he just sat silent next to me in the back seat.

JIM HAROLD: Was his physicality like your friend? Was he a similar size?

CLIFF: Yeah.

JIM HAROLD: So physically, his face looked like him, and he was also kind of built like him.

CLIFF: Yeah, exactly. He just looked a little bit like he was unwell, let’s say, in the face. Like a little bit – I don’t know, kind of how you would be if you were sick.

JIM HAROLD: You’ve had a long time to reflect about this, almost 50 years. Have you determined – was it just a weird coincidence and series of events? Or have you come to the conclusion that there might be a more supernatural explanation?

CLIFF: I’ve come to that conclusion. As I said, there were two other people in the car. They all stopped, all three of us turned around and looked behind us – the guy was nowhere to be seen. And yet he was in the car, in the back seat with me, and he was talking to the driver. He wasn’t really talking to me. He was talking to the driver. I have no other conclusion to hit upon other than this had to have happened.

JIM HAROLD: At the time this happened, when he came into the car – and again, this is a long time ago. I know sometimes I can’t remember what I had for breakfast last week, or yesterday for that matter. So it’s tough to ask you your thoughts as he was coming in because that’s just a moment in time almost 50 years ago, but did it occur to you to say something to him like, “Hey, you look a lot like my friend who passed”?

CLIFF: No, I didn’t say that. But you know what, even if it’s been 50 years, this made such an impression upon me that I remember everything about it, except for what he said to the driver in the car. But other than that, I remember sitting next to him. This was a stranger. I wasn’t going to say, “Hey, you look like a dead friend of mine,” you know? [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I understand. At the time, before he jumped out of the car and disappeared, if you can remember this, did you think “It’s just a heck of a coincidence”? Or did you say from the get-go, “This could be my dead friend”?

CLIFF: No, I thought it was a real coincidence. It wasn’t until he jumped out of the car and we looked and he was nowhere to be seen, that’s when I went, “This is not a coincidence.”

JIM HAROLD: The fact he jumped out of the car, which is odd behavior – but you never know, somebody could be on something or have mental issues or something.

CLIFF: To tell you the truth, this friend was known for doing stupid things like that.

JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Interesting. But then when he disappears, that to me is the capper. It’s like, okay, now we’re dealing with something from another realm here.

CLIFF: Definitely.

JIM HAROLD: Very interesting. Speaking of dealing with another realm, you are an author. We’ve had you on the shows before, Cliff Aguirre. Give people about a minute or so on your books and where they can find them. And I know we’re going to have you back on a future show.

CLIFF: I’m actually doing a Version 2 of my book Journey Back. Journey Back is a book about past life regressions. Now, I do hypnotherapy, and some of my clients started going into past lives to solve some of their issues that they had in their present life. So I got together about 27 volunteers who went back into past lives, and these are all their stories put together in a book. I also have a podcast called Journey Back, which is actual recordings, so people can actually hear what people are talking about.

My other book is The Death Transition, which talks about what it’s like to pass over. This friend from 1971, plus another friend of mine who passed away, told me about this book. It was almost like a channeled book. They actually were the ones that told me, “You’re going to write this book, and this is the tittle.” So that’s what that book is.

JIM HAROLD: How neat is that?

CLIFF: Then I have my other book, Encounters with the Other Side, which is true stories, true ghost stories that I’ve experienced personally, and also friends that have returned after they’ve passed away. It’s quite interesting stuff.

JIM HAROLD: Indeed. Where can people find your books and more information about what you do?

CLIFF: They can find my books on Amazon.com, or they can go to cliffbooksmusic.com and links will be there to purchase my books. For the past life, they can go to cliffaguirre.com for my website. You’ll find everything from podcasts – even podcasts that you and I have done together.

JIM HAROLD: There you go. Cliff Aguirre. Everybody check it out. We appreciate your time today, Cliff. What a fantastic story, really. And by the way, Cliff’s last name is spelled A-G-U-I-R-R-E. Cliff Aguirre. Cliff, thanks for being on the show and thanks for sharing that amazing haunted hitchhiker story.

CLIFF: Thanks for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Stamps.com. Now, 2023 is already well underway. We’re almost through first quarter – can you believe that? So don’t wait any longer to level up your small business and set your year up for success. There is still time! Get ahead of the competition by using Stamps.com to mail and ship. That’s what we do. Stamps.com lets you print your own postage and shipping labels right from your home or office, and it’s ready to go in minutes so you can get back to running your business sooner.

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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: Oh, we love to speak with other podcasters. Paulina is on the line, and she has a podcast, the Caribbean Mystics Podcast. She’s going to tell us about that in a minute, but first she has a very, very engaging story, and it surrounds an old graveyard. Paulina, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us today, and tell us about this graveyard.

PAULINA: For sure. Thank you for having me as well, Jim. First off, I’m from Saint Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands. It’s a small little island in the Caribbean. It’s close to Puerto Rico. It’s a top tier travel destination for tourists, but what a lot of people don’t know is that our islands hold a lot of dark history. I’m going to tell you a story about this one specific graveyard that I visited.

It’s been around since the 1800s, right across from Frenchtown on Saint Thomas. My grandfather and my great-grandfather are buried there because I’m an ancestral Virgin Islander. Currently I’m not living in Saint Thomas, but when I go down and visit my family, usually I’ll go to this graveyard to pay respects to my great-grandparents and grandparents.

One day I went down there with my boyfriend. We stopped at my grandfather’s grave and I paid my respects. Another thing is our tombs are aboveground. They’re not like ordinary graveyards where you can walk over, or they’re on the grass. After that, I went to go visit my great-grandfather, which is really old. It’s on the far side of the graveyard, and because it’s old, it’s been kind of overlapped by other tombstones, so you kind of have to climb on top of other people’s graves to reach it.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my, okay.

PAULINA: It’s in the middle, and there’s a lot of bush. This used to be really beautiful, but over time it’s become kind of neglected. Nobody wants to walk there anymore because there’s a lot of sketchy things that go on there, physically and spiritually. So I reach my great-grandfather’s tombstone. It’s this giant, gaudy-looking tomb. It’s got this huge cross on it and it says our last name in big bold letters.

When I reach it, I notice that it smells really weird, just disgusting, kind of like rotting eggs. I’m like, okay. I’m showing my boyfriend, “This is his tomb.” I crawl on top of it and I notice that it’s covered with oil stains and coins. Then I see a cassava bowl filled with fish heads and bones. A cassava bowl is a fruit, so it’s carved out and it’s dried, and you can put objects in it. It’s like the size of half a basketball or something, but it’s filled with fish heads and fishbones. Then there’s burned-out candles and a bottle of rum and wax. I’m like, someone’s been doing some kind of ritual.

JIM HAROLD: Like magic, yeah.

PAULINA: Yes. It looked ritualistic, and I kind of recognized what this was. But the thing is, I’m not the first person to witness this on this grave. I actually cleaned it out and saged the place and cleared that energy as well, just for respect to my ancestors. But the thing is, this has happened before. My dad has gone there once, and he’s actually found a small coffin, about nine inches, with a skeleton wearing a suit inside of it.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

PAULINA: Yeah, really strange. It looked like it was decomposing. He also found lit candles, and the same things I found – coins spread out, usually pennies or nickels. There was also this terrible rotten egg smell surrounding the area. And then small offerings of such. He even found these little dolls. The little skeleton in the coffin, little homemade-looking dolls. It was really bizarre. And then the worst finding was from my cousin. She found an actual pig’s head, decapitated, on top of our tombstone.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

PAULINA: She cleaned it up and apparently she was trying to reach out to the caretakers of this graveyard, but there’s a big superstition on the island around that site and nobody wants to go clear it, nobody wants to clean it because they’re scared. I ended up doing research because I’m familiar with magical practices, and I wanted to know exactly what this was. I had my suspicions, but I just wanted to double check and get more information.

After researching, I found that it looks like this is a practice in voodoo or hoodoo, which is not uncommon where I’m from because we have a lot of Down Islanders and a lot of different spiritual practices coming from Haiti or Dominican Republic or Dominica. What I found on this site stated that it’s a ritual to attain power, and in order to do that, they recommend going to an old graveyard and finding the biggest and most elaborate tombstone or a tombstone of a prominent family. This was my family. It’s a very recognized name in the Caribbean.

But they say to find that family that has that prominence and then to leave offerings around the tomb for the spirit. Once you leave those offerings and complete your ritual – I’m sure there’s some other words to be said or action – you have to walk backwards in order for the spirit to not follow you home. And that’s my story.

JIM HAROLD: That is quite a story. Your family had been, I think you mentioned, somewhat prominent in that area, so this was an effort to try to ask for some of that power.

PAULINA: I guess so. My grandfather was a senator, my great-grandfather found pirates’ treasure. We have a lot of weird legends and mysteries around my family. But yeah, apparently this was some kind of ritual to attain some sort of power, whether it’s in your business or for yourself or some success.

JIM HAROLD: Very cool. Paulina, I know you are also continuing your family’s prominence with your podcast, so give us a couple of minutes on what it is and where people can find it.

PAULINA: For sure. It’s called Caribbean Mystics Podcast. I work with a partner of mine, Gabrielle. We are both ancestral Virgin Islanders, and it is all true paranormal stories told first person from people from the Caribbean. It’s all Caribbean-based, either from tourists or people that live there, an it’s all true encounters of strange phenomena. We have UFO sightings, angel encounters, typical ghost hauntings. But it’s all very Caribbean-based. And then myself and my partner go into cultural, historical, or locational context if it relates to the story, so we deep-dive about the lore and their sightings and even some skepticism.

You can find it on all podcast streaming platforms. It’s Caribbean Mystics. Even our Instagram and Facebook is Caribbean Mystics Podcast.

JIM HAROLD: Very good. Paulina, thank you, and all the best with your podcast.

PAULINA: Thank you so much, Jim. Much appreciated.

JIM HAROLD: Anthony is on the line. He’s going to tell us about some interesting coincidences, and – well, I’ll let him tell you, but it’s a fun and interesting story. Anthony, welcome to the show, all the way from Newcastle, England. So glad to speak with you, and please tell us what happened.

ANTHONY: Thanks, Jim. I’ve got a story that’s a coincidence that’s too much to be a coincidence that leads into a ghost story. A little bit of background on it: my mom and dad had trouble conceiving me. They tried for two or three years, they just couldn’t conceive. But my grandma on my mother’s side was adamant that she was going to have a grandson. She kept saying, “When me grandson’s born,” “When I have my little boy.” Unfortunately, my Grandma Emma died a year or so before I was born.

JIM HAROLD: Aww.

ANTHONY: Just after she died, my mom and dad fell pregnant. Now, the story in our little family is that she went to the baby office in heaven and she put an order in for a grandchild, and then I was conceived. So that’s genuinely how I got brought up, and we always have a laugh about it.

Now, flash forward 30 years later, me and my wife are in a very similar situation where we cannot conceive, and my dad took ill seven years ago, I think it was, with lung cancer. It was terminal. The week before he died, we were having a big chat and I said, “If there’s anything on the other side, will you go to the baby office and put an order in for us?” He smiled and he said, “Of course, son. The first thing I’ll do when I get there is I’ll go to the baby office for you.”

The day he died, I was holding his hand – it was just me and him in the room – and I said, “If there’s anything there, do you remember your promise, Dad?” He just squeezed me hand. A couple of months after my father passed, me and my wife fell pregnant. Now, the kicker is, my daughter’s due date was my father’s birthday.

JIM HAROLD: Oh boy. [laughs]

ANTHONY: I mean, she came late because she’s a woman and that’s to be expected. [laughs] But that message was there and it was like, wow, that’s fantastic. We called her Emma after my Grandma Emma. My daughter was about three, about three years ago now, and she was playing in her bedroom and she came through to my bedroom and she went, “Daddy, there’s a woman on the bed.” It was only me and her in the house. I thought, “There’d better not be.”

So I went through. Luckily for me, there was no one sitting on the bed, but she was adamant. I went, “Where’s the woman, Emma?” She went, “There, Daddy.” I went, “What’s she called?” This is when my daughter’s demeanor changed completely, and she went very angry. She went, “No. No, I am Emma. No, I am! Daddy, this woman says she is Emma, but I am Emma!” I said, “Oh brilliant, your grandma’s come to visit and you’re giving her a mouthful of abuse.” So that’s the two ghost stories that I’ve got, the coincidence that’s very much too much of a coincidence, and then my daughter seeing my grandma in the house.

JIM HAROLD: I love it, and I love the fact – that’s the kicker, “She says she’s Emma, but I’m Emma!” That is great. That is just great. And I’ve got to believe that your dad did do that for you. I’ve got to believe that. It’s, again, too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. I love to think that our loved ones are there looking out for us and trying to make life a little bit better and a little bit smoother for us, or in this case a lot. I think that’s what your dad did. And to boot, your grandma came to say hello. That is just awesome. Anthony, thank you so much for sharing this great story on the Campfire today.

ANTHONY: Thank you for having me on, Jim. Take care.

JIM HAROLD: Beth is back from North Carolina. She’s been on the shows before, and tonight she is going to tell us a remarkable UFO story. Beth, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us about this UFO.

BETH: Hi, Jim!

JIM HAROLD: Hello!

BETH: I guess I’ll start out by saying at this time I was living back at home with my mom. It had been raining for days. This was January 15th, 2018. I walked outside. It was about 12:15 a.m. My brother and I walked out because it’d finally stopped raining and there were clouds, but you could see the stars shining through. We walk out, we’re looking up, admiring the stars and the clouds. I’m about ready to go back in, and I’m looking down at my phone when I hear my brother. He’s like, “Beth, can you see this? Do you see this? Tell me, can you see this?”

I look up, and it’s this huge ball of glowing – it almost looked like the sun, it was so bright. I don’t know how to – I’ve tried to describe it to people before, but I feel like we don’t have words in the English language to really describe the material that made up this thing. But it was a perfect circle, and it’s glowing super bright. It wasn’t very high; it was well below the clouds, but above the tree line. The only word that comes to my mind is like plasma. It looked like liquid fire, but pulsing, kind of.

As soon as I saw it, I was overcome with emotions. I had tears in my eyes. I can’t really explain the reaction that I had. It was almost like an instinctual reaction. I don’t know. It was weird. Anyway, my brother runs out to the yard and he’s looking up, and I was kind of scared. We just watched it. It was slow-moving and it was completely silent. I know it was silent because we’re outside and while we’re watching it, the A/C actually cut on, so it stood out to me just how silent it was. But yeah, trying to describe it, I feel like it’s like trying to describe a color. You can’t really get it unless you saw it.

There were no wings, there was no cockpit, nothing. But I just got the sense that this thing was totally aware, like it knew that it was visible. And I don’t know how anyone – I was thinking, “If people are driving right now, they’d have to see this thing.” But really, unless you were looking up, I guess you wouldn’t know to look up because it didn’t make a sound. But it was so low. I’ve had airplanes come over that rattle the house, and this thing was closer than that. And there was no wind, nothing.

JIM HAROLD: And you don’t feel there’s any chance at all this was manmade? You think this was something from somewhere else?

BETH: Absolutely not. The material was out of this world. It kind of reminded me of the stuff you see in a lava lamp.

JIM HAROLD: The gloop. [laughs]

BETH: Yeah, but not quite. The liquid fire, as I call it, was almost like – I feel like it would’ve almost been transparent, like maybe you could’ve – but it was too thick. It was like it was swirling and moving. I actually took my phone out and I snapped some pictures, and I almost didn’t think they would even be there. I told my brother when we went in, “Watch, they’re not going to be there.” He said, “Oh, they’re there.” And they were. But it was 2018. It was an iPhone. It didn’t show up like –

JIM HAROLD: Right. Even now, smartphones have tremendous pictures; if you’re taking snapshots at birthday parties, if there’s daylight, they can take remarkable pictures. But when you’re talking about something at night and at distance, to take pictures of that kind of stuff, you need cameras that are thousands and thousands of dollars with special lenses. There’s only so much a smartphone, even the best ones, can pick up.

BETH: Exactly. You know, though, looking at the pictures, it was weird because the shape of this object in the pictures was nothing like it looked in real life. In real life it’s this perfect circle, perfect ball, and in the pictures it almost looks like a grain of rice. And it wasn’t moving super fast. It was just steadily – we probably watched it for one to two minutes, something like that. We had a perfect view. It was right over us. But yeah, it showed up looking like a grain of rice. And you could tell that the color was changing because of the way it looked. But the pictures, when I try to show anyone, it just looks like nothing.

JIM HAROLD: Right. That’s not your fault. That’s just the way it is. Like I said, with smartphones, it just doesn’t quite meet it. I guess certainly if you weren’t a believer, that made you a believer in the UFO phenomenon, right?

BETH: Yes. I always wondered and I always felt like it, but seeing it, it was just overwhelming. And I was terrified. All night, I don’t think I slept at all. I was researching. I actually found out – there was an article in the Charlotte Observer, which is a big name newspaper – I found online that there was actually a family that was a little less than an hour away from my house that had seen – basically they described the same exact thing, but they had seen three of them, like two or three days before I saw it.

JIM HAROLD: Very interesting indeed, Beth. I know you have a headscratcher for us, and we’ll get that on a future show. And Beth, one other thing I wanted to mention: a big shoutout to Roman and Oren. I know your kids listen to the show. Really, really appreciate it. And thank you so much for being on the Campfire.

BETH: Oh, thank you so much, Jim. Stay spooky!

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Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our Virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Amber is on the line from Kansas. Sometimes people will title their stories, and this is the best one, or one of the best ones, I’ve ever heard. It makes me think, “Ooh, what’s that story about?” The title is “The Plaid Man and the Laughing Girl.” Ooh, spooky. Amber, thank you for joining us. I know you’ve been listening for about five years. I appreciate that. Please tell us your story.

AMBER: Thank you, Jim. I’m so excited to be on. I’m going to give a little backstory. I was a sheriff’s deputy at the time. I was in my twenties. I had just purchased my own home. I was a youth group leader, totally normal human. I lived in an older farmhouse, and it was still considered in the city limits, but it was on the edge of town. It had three acres. I was very excited and young and pumped to own my own home.

I’d moved in and I was painting my house, and my grandmother was sitting in the kitchen with me. She was in her nineties at the time. As I’m painting, my grandmother was like, “Amber, somebody just walked by your window.” Of course, I was like, “That’s kind of weird. I’d better go check it out.” Again, I was young and lived by myself and I had just moved in. I ran around the back of the house and I didn’t see anyone. I was thinking, “Okay, she’s older, she’s got dementia and eye problems. Whatever happened, happened.” I asked her, “What did this guy look like?” She said, “It was an older gentleman and he had a red plaid shirt on and he had suspenders.” I was like, okay, that’s weird, because at the time I didn’t have any neighbors. My closest neighbor was the Noxious Weed Department. [laughs] I was a little worried, but I was like, okay, whatever, Grandma’s just doing grandma things.

A short time passed and my significant other and I were making dinner one night. My kitchen opened up into the dining room. He stops dead in his tracks – he had been walking from the fridge to the oven – and he’s like, “Amber, some guy was just standing in your living room.” Of course, I was like, “Okay, great, this guy’s crazy.” [laughs] I was like, “What did he look like?” He said, “He just vanished. He had a red plaid shirt on and he had suspenders, and he was older.” At that point I was like, okay, this is weird.

I was like, “Did you talk to my grandma? Have you spoken to her?” He’s like, “No, what are you talking about?” I let him know my grandma saw the same person outside of my house one evening. He was like, “That’s weird.” I asked my grandma later, “Did you talk to him?” She was like, “No, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” She had forgotten about it at that point in time. I’m like, okay, that was kind of concerning. But again, I was like, whatever, we’re going to move on from this. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, right?

Then I was tutoring a girl, and it was late at night. It was probably 10:00 or 10:30 at night, and we had finished up our tutoring session. She had a test the next day. She got in her car and left. I had walked her out to the gate. It was very dark. She got in her car and was off okay. Well, her mother called me about 10 minutes later, frantic. I’m like, “What’s going on? Is she okay?”, thinking she had gotten in an accident or something on her way home. She goes, “No, my daughter just said that she got in her car, and as she was leaving, she looked in her rearview mirror and she saw a man in plaid with suspenders on sitting in her backseat, and then when she looked back, he vanished.”

At that point, I was like, this is concerning. She was just a girl I tutored. She had never spoken to my family members. I was like, it’s a little bit too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. So life went on, and I would hear bootsteps across the wood floor. It’s very obvious what they sounded like. I had walked across the floor many times with my boots on, and that’s what it sounded like. They would always stop outside of my bedroom door.

Then one night, I was sleeping and I woke up because I had heard a little girl laughing. Jim, it was the creepiest laugh I’ve ever heard. It was this echoey, high-pitched laugh. I don’t know a better way to describe it. The TV had been on, but the volume was all the way down because I like to sleep with it on with the volume down just for some light in the room. I’m thinking, okay, maybe it was the TV even though the volume is down. I try to explain it away, trying to be logical about it.

Well, I went to South Dakota for a training, and my significant other was home, and he called me the next morning and he’s frantic. Of course, I’m like, again, “What’s happened?” He was like, “I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw a little girl standing by the bed.” It was so creepy. I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going on in this house.” It was so creepy. I never saw her, but I did hear the laughter that one night. He said she was younger and had dark curly hair, I think. I was like, “Okay, cool. Thanks for sharing.” [laughs] So that was the little girl and the plaid man.

Now, I did have one time I woke up and there was a dark figure at the foot of the bed, and the dogs were growling. That was the only time I really ever felt scared in the house, when that dark figure was standing there. And now my husband – I was dating him at the time – he actually heard someone walk around the bed when he was in the room once. He had laid down and he heard someone walk around the bed. I’m like, “Are you sure it’s not the dogs?” He said no. He’s like, “I heard someone walk around the bed.” So we had quite a few things go on in the house. But those are the main ones.

JIM HAROLD: Wow, that’s pretty wild. I’ve got to say, I think when you get these houses, you don’t know what was there before and what might be attached. Maybe you said it and I missed it, but did you move out of that house eventually?

AMBER: I did move out. When my husband and I got married, I moved in with him. I sold the house and moved out.

JIM HAROLD: Any idea who it might’ve been, this laughing girl and this man in plaid?

AMBER: I don’t know. I did some research on the house, and I was told it was built in the 1940s, but I found some information that maybe the house was from like 1917, early 1900s. So I have no idea other than that it might’ve been an older property.

JIM HAROLD: I’ll say this. That’s a long time, and a lot of different people could’ve lived in that house, so you may very well have been seeing someone who had been there before.

AMBER: Yes, absolutely. I’m not sure. I will say it was a little bit unnerving. I ended up having my pastor come in. I don’t know if he really blessed the house, but he said a prayer and things like that, and I would say things got better after he was there.

JIM HAROLD: Very interesting. Amber, thank you so much for sharing your story on Campfire, and stay spooky.

AMBER: Thank you, Jim. You too.

JIM HAROLD: Kerri Anne is on the line from Massachusetts, and she says she loves the Campfire and she’s been binging it, and we really, really appreciate that. She’s going to tell us a workplace story, and we’re so glad to have her with us today. Kerri Anne, welcome to the program and please tell us what happened.

KERRI ANNE: Thank you so much for having me. About five years ago, I worked at a strip club in a very spooky area of New England. I had just started. I had been there for about two weeks, and I decided to go in on Christmas day because I had nothing else going on in the afternoon and they didn’t have a lot of people, so I decided to go in. Before, when I had started working there, I had always sensed something but had never seen anything. I have a “Spidey sense,” I call it, because I always can sense things.

So I go in and I’m sitting down and the dressing room is a gigantic room that has lockers on each side, and there’s little rooms in the back for girls to stay over and stuff like that. I go in and I’m getting dressed and I look down the end of the hallway, which is a good distance, probably about 20 feet from me if not longer. I look down and I see this girl staring at me. She peeks around the mirror and smiles at me. She’s absolutely stunning. Long blonde hair, had a really nice smile. I smile back and continue getting ready.

One of the owners comes upstairs and he goes, “Hey, I need you to get downstairs. I have nobody and there’s a bunch of people downstairs. I really need you to get back.” I turn and go, “Why can’t she go down?” He looks at me and goes, “Honey, you’re the only one here.” I go, “What do you mean I’m the only one here?” I look back down the hallway and it is empty, black. No lights on whatsoever, none of the rooms were lit up, nothing. I look at him and he goes, “Oh, you saw her?” I go, “Saw who?” He goes, “She doesn’t really show herself to a lot of people.” I’m like, “Okay, who are you talking about?”

A young lady had passed away, and she always would come back and would only show herself to certain girls. She was always there. A few months later, I was upstairs on the third floor where they had dorm rooms, sleeping, and I woke up to my hair completely French braided. One of the other girls that shared the room with me goes, “Oh, I didn’t see that girl ever before.” I go, “What girl?” She goes, “The girl with blonde hair. She was in here lying on your bed braiding your hair. I thought she was your friend.” I’m like, “Nope.”

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

KERRI ANNE: I don’t know what it was, but she always liked to show herself to me, and she would do things. There were other times I had gone up there to get something to eat and I would see her walking into the kitchen. When I would walk into the kitchen, there would be nobody there.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my gosh. You said in your note to me that she died tragically. I wonder if that’s partially a result of why she showed herself. That’s sad. But that’s amazing, and the fact that your boss said something along the lines of “Oh, you saw her.”

KERRI ANNE: Yes. I guess a couple other girls had reported seeing her and stuff, but nobody had as many interactions as I had with her and the things that happened. Nobody else’s hair had been braided or anything like that. And I know from the information from other people that knew her, she didn’t really have a family or anything. So I think after she passed, she came back there because that was the only place she knew. I guess she was living there at the time that it happened.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness.

KERRI ANNE: I abruptly stopped working there, so I never got a chance to go back and tell her to cross over or anything. I would like to go back, but I just haven’t had a chance. It’s quite a distance away from where I live now.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness. You called in with a couple of other stories; do you have one that you could fit in a few minutes, another one?

KERRI ANNE: Yeah. When I was about nine, I would go to a cemetery with my dad and we would put out the flags for Memorial Day. My dad was a veteran and we would always go around, and it was a very old cemetery, like extremely old. It had a new part, but it had an old part. I met this lady and we were talking because, of course, I was a chatterbox kid. I went up to her and said hi. She was putting flowers on a piece of granite that looked like a mountain, and I was asking her about it. She goes, “Oh, my son passed away in a rock climbing accident.” Of course, I was young; I was like, “Oh, I’m really sorry” and I left it alone. I had seen her a couple of years after that, from going every year. I would see her. Then I stopped going with my dad because I grew up and got into horses and had no time for anything.

When I was in my early twenties, a group of friends and I decided that we were going to go do some ghost hunting, so we got permission from the local cemetery so we could go. They gave us permission, and we were there. We did a whole thing. When we got back, I started listening to my recordings. And clear as day, I can hear a man’s voice say, “Kerri Anne, you know my mom. If you can hear me, please come back.” My friends and I all looked at each other and I’m like, “Did he just say my name?” We never said our names when we were there, so we were like, “What the heck just happened?”

We went back the next day and I said, “I can hear you.” I knew exactly where it was, where the voice came from. We went back and he says, “I hope you know your life has a meaning and a purpose. Thank you for making my mom smile.” It gave me goosebumps when I got home that night and listened to it. I no longer have the recording, but I wish I still did. But it was clear as day, like somebody was standing next to me, telling me thank you. All of my friends were like, “What just happened?”

JIM HAROLD: Wow. It sounds like to me, from this story and the previous story, that you’re tuned in. Have you always considered yourself tuned in to the other side?

KERRI ANNE: Yes, always, since I was little. My dad would always tell me that I had the special gift. It came from his side of the family and my mom’s side of the family. My great-grandmother was psychic, and then my dad’s mother also was psychic and had the ability to see things. When I would go to her house as a kid – her house was very old – I would see people and see stuff, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, don’t worry, that’s so-and-so.” I’d be like, “Okay.” I was one of those creepy kids that would have imaginary friends but they would actually be dead relatives. I would look at pictures – I’d be like, “Oh yeah, my imaginary friend.”

JIM HAROLD: Interesting. It’s one of those things where either you have it or you don’t. I know that I’ve talked to psychics and so forth that said that you can make yourself more sensitive and so forth. I agree with that to a point, but I think some people do have that gift. I really do believe that. Kerri Anne, thank you so much for joining us today and being a part of the Campfire.

KERRI ANNE: Thank you so much for having me.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Rochelle is on the line from Michigan. She’s been listening to us for a little bit over a year, and her husband, Larry, told her about the show. So Larry, thank you so much. And let Larry be an example: tell your spouse, tell your significant other, tell your friends and family about the Campfire, like Larry did. Rochelle is going to talk to us about paranormal things that she’s been experiencing since childhood. Rochelle, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us some of these paranormal experiences.

ROCHELLE: Hey, how are you doing, Jim? Happy to be on here.

JIM HAROLD: Good to have you.

ROCHELLE: I grew up on the west side of Detroit in a two-bedroom home with 10 other siblings. We all experienced something. Sometimes it’d be the same or it’d be different stuff. We made one of the rooms, which was the den, a bedroom, and that den was across from the fireplace, where I experienced a lot of this stuff. When I was six or seven years old, every morning – I’m guessing at 2:00 or 3:00 because I’d wake up around that time; I was a kid – I would see a big gargoyle-looking head with red eyes.

JIM HAROLD: Whoa.

ROCHELLE: Yeah. Sometimes it’d be a big gargoyle body with the head sticking over the fireplace or it’d just be a big head. I used to be scared. I used to call for my mama and I used to tell my mama about it. She was like, “Don’t call on me.” I was like, “I’m scared. I want you to come.” She told me not to call on her. She told me to call on Jesus. I was still scared. I didn’t call on Jesus. It took me some time. I was still scared. I would just put my cover over my head.

One time, something told me to call on him. I called on him. I looked at this big gargoyle with red eyes looking at me, just staring at me. I used to pee in the bed. I’m not ashamed to say it. I used to pee in the bed a lot because of this thing. There were other things, but this was one of the main things. I would have my siblings going to the bathroom with me because I would see that thing. Something told me to get up, so I got up, and I was walking towards it. I was still scared but something was pushing me towards it. When I got closer, it disappeared. Then I scoot back – it’s there again.

But when I think about the story, I know I had little faith in the Lord, but my light was shining. When my light shines, I’m thinking that’s what made it disappear, by me not being scared. Ever since then I wasn’t scared of that. I was scared of other stuff in that house, but that part I was not scared of. But I was still seeing it until we moved out of the house. It’s like they were trying to scare me still. But I would look at it – it had red eyes. It was black. The whole house was black, but you could still see it. It was blacker than black with red eyes over the fireplace, just standing there, sitting there, or it’d be a big giant gargoyle head with a smiling grin.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man. What do you think it was?

ROCHELLE: An evil spirit. It scared me. Anything that scares you is an evil spirit. It was an evil spirit.

JIM HAROLD: And it wasn’t just that. In more recent years you’ve had experiences too, right?

ROCHELLE: Oh man, one of the things – my siblings used to hear people in our basement playing cards or having a party. My parents never heard it. I never heard it, and I was curious. One time at night, I went down towards the basement. That basement was pitch black. It should never be pitch black because it had windows down there and the light from the streetlight would shine. That basement was always pitch black, and I don’t know how or why. If you’d go towards it, you would feel an evil spirit over it. Never heard it, but I felt evil spirits. I went down to try to confront it. There was a lot of stuff that happened. My sister saw the Hat Man in the house, walking back and forth in the kitchen.

A crawling hand. This story is crazy. Two of my sisters heard knocking at the door at night. They were scared. They were trying to get one of my other sisters up. She wouldn’t get up. They kept hearing knocking on the door, banging on the door. Then they saw a crawling hand on our porch. They look out the window. “Maybe it’s not true.” But the next morning, they opened the door – there was blood on that door. The door was bloody. They saw a crawling hand.

I’m like, are we experiencing stuff because of what my father told us? Before we were born, he said somebody cursed our family. He was living in that house. They did some witchcraft. He said he opened a door and there was a lot of candles and demonic symbols and stuff on the porch. He was a truck driver, so he was on the way from the porch to his truck, and he said some lady told him, “You won’t have any kids, and if you do, they will all die.”

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

ROCHELLE: Yep. Well, he had another twelve kids. One died before he was born. He had complications. But my mama had nine after that.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. Have you had any paranormal experiences recently? Or has that stopped?

ROCHELLE: No, my kids even go through it. My kids tell me their stories and I tell them the truth. I tell them my stories that I’ve been through. My daughter comes to me like, “Mommy, a spirit came to me again. It was touching me.” Or she’d hear whispers at night. Or one of my daughters saw a big spirit in the living room with hoofs on its head. She said it was hairy. I’m like, “Are you serious?” My other daughter saw something in the bathroom. It was looking in the room. The bathroom is across from the room. It was looking in the room. They don’t like when the bathroom door’s open. So there’s a lot of stuff still happening in my life and my kids’ lives. I told them we’re going to always go through this, but we’ve just got to show no fear.

JIM HAROLD: I think showing no fear might be difficult, but I think that’s a smart thing.

ROCHELLE: Oh yeah, it’s difficult as a kid.

JIM HAROLD: That’s important. Is this something you wish you could get rid of? What are your thoughts? Are you just resigned that you have to live with these paranormal experiences?

ROCHELLE: I’m used to it. I told my kids to get used to it because no matter where you go, you’re going to see it. We’re living in the last stage where things are going to be shown to you. We’re going to come across a lot of stuff in life. Me as a kid going through this, I’m numb to it now. I’m not scared anymore. So in a way, I’m happy that they’re going through it now so they’ll probably be like me. I pray they do, and they’ll be numb to it and they can teach their kids also. But they’re not that scared. They’re still scared; they’re kids. But they know to call on Jesus. But they’ve still got that kid fear. I understand.

JIM HAROLD: Well, Rochelle, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it, and best of luck with dealing with some of these more sinister energies indeed. Thank you for being a part of the show today.

ROCHELLE: Thank you. Stay spooky.

JIM HAROLD: Stay spooky!

Madison is on the line from Indiana. She’s been listening for several months. Found out about us from that great podcast, Stories with Sapphire. Madison is going to tell us about an experience that happened when she moved into a house with two roommates. Madison, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

MADISON: Thank you, Jim. I was moving into a house with two roommates, as you said, and the first weekend we got there – we moved in on Thursday, and Saturday we were having a little neighborhood get-together, like “meet your neighbors.” One of our friends brought someone and he came up to me and asked, “Hey ,are you the person that lives in this house?” I was like, “Oh, yeah, I am.” He said, “I just want to let you know, I am a medium, and I just wanted to tell you that there is a protective old woman that still resides in this house.” I don’t want to say that I was not open to the idea necessarily, but I just wrote it off like, “Okay, thank you.” I had nothing happen in the first few days I was there.

Well, moving forward, we noticed little things. It was an older house, so we figured the creaking was maybe just the wood or whatever. We would hear footsteps and little things move, and then it got into more – like we would have a drawer open in the kitchen. Just some weird things that we would all be out and come home and stuff would be moved.

And then we had one incident. We were all standing in the kitchen – it was a multi-level home – and one of my roommates had a little metal bedside table upstairs. We were all standing in the kitchen downstairs, talking. She was getting ready to leave for fall break. All of a sudden, we heard the table move across the floor upstairs. We joked like, “Oh, the old lady’s back at it.” Since it was in her room, she made the mistake of cursing at the old lady, jokingly. We didn’t really think much of it. She left.

She came back a week later and as soon as she walked in the door, she walked into the threshold of her room, passed that threshold, and the fire alarm started going off. We were like, “We turned on the heat yesterday. Maybe there’s an issue with that. No big deal.” We walked out of the house, shut off the heat, and as soon as we walked out of the house, all of the fire alarms started going off. We contacted our emergency maintenance because we didn’t see any smoke or anything of that nature, and we walked over to our neighbor’s house. It was late at night, so the emergency maintenance took quite a while. So for an hour and a half straight, all of the fire alarms, the smoke detectors, were going off from each level. We could hear it.

Finally the emergency maintenance got there an hour and a half later, and as soon as he pulled in our driveway, they all stopped. We were like, “That’s a little peculiar.” But we told him, “Hey, they just stopped going off. Surely there would be something.” He reassured us, “If they just stopped going off, I’ll be able to get a carbon monoxide reading or gas reading,” whatever, trying to reassure us, like “Don’t worry, we’ll get to the root of the problem.” He was at our house for probably about 15 minutes or so and came back out, and he was like, “Girls, I’m sorry, I’m not seeing anything.”

I told him, “Well, I did shut the heat off before I walked out. Maybe if you turn it back on, we would see something there?” So he turned the heat all the way back up and started doing a walkthrough of the house again for probably another 10-15 minutes. He came out and said, “Ladies, I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing anything.” So we chuckled and said, “Oh, must be the old lady.” The maintenance man asked, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” We just stated, “We had someone that said they were a medium and said there was an old lady that was protective over this house, so we just joke when stuff happens that it’s the old lady.”

He looked at us and he said, “Honestly, that’s exactly what I would chalk it up to, too.” Then come to find out none of these smoke alarms were actually connected to one another – because we figured when one goes off, they all start going off. There was no Bluetooth connection. And the one that started going off was right above her room, and that’s what started it all. As soon as she crossed that threshold, it started going off. I was in shock when he said that.

I did not spend the night in my house. I went to a friend’s house. My friend blessed the house. She had some sage. Nothing really bad happened after that. We’d still hear little footsteps and stuff as far as that, but nothing to that extent.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. So you think that potentially this old lady ghost took exception to someone cursing at her. [laughs]

MADISON: We didn’t actually think about that until after it happened. We’re like, “What could’ve caused that?” We were standing outside and it hit us, like, oh my goodness, right before she left, we could hear that bedside table scoot across the floor and she, like I said, made a sly comment towards her. We came to the conclusion that maybe that’s what set it off. We really don’t know, but it was just funny that the second she got home and crossed the threshold into her room, everything started going off.

JIM HAROLD: So if your house is haunted by a kindly old lady, be nice. [laughs] Or she might not be so kind.

MADISON: Exactly.

JIM HAROLD: Madison, thanks so much for sharing your story today on the Campfire, and stay spooky.

MADISON: Thank you. You too, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Alish is on the line from Yorkshire, England. I love the support we get from England and all the British Isles. We really very much appreciate it. Alish is going to tell us a story; she says that it gives her chills to this day, and I’ll let her give some chills to you as well. Alish, welcome to the show. I know you’ve been listening since the lockdown, like a lot of people. Appreciate it very much. Tell us this story.

ALISH: Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me. About 10-15 years ago, I was living in my hometown, Doncaster in South Yorkshire, and a friend of mine moved in with her boyfriend into a house. In Yorkshire we call it a “two-up two-down.” I think that’s probably across the UK. It’s an old workers’ or miners’ house, and there would be an outhouse for the bathroom outside. A lot of them were changed so that they could have bathrooms inside. This one in particular had a very strange corridor that ran almost the whole perimeter of the house to get to the bathroom. It was always such an eerie feeling when you had to go upstairs in that house to use the bathroom.

Anyway, my friend moved into this house, and I got calls from her and heard from her quite a bit, because we were really close, that when she’d been out running errands or doing her job – say she’d had a cleaning sort of day, so she’d clean up the house and then she’d go out to the shop. When she’d get back, one room in particular would consistently be trashed. She’d come back and ring me and she’d go, “Oh my gosh, it’s happened again.” She’d go into the front room she’d cleaned, and everything was a mess. Things were pushed off the table. There was a little fireplace mantel, everything was pushed off that. The sofa cushions were everywhere. The door would be wide open when she’d left it shut.

She lived with her boyfriend, so I was a bit skeptical at the time and I just thought, “Hmm, maybe the boyfriend’s having her on a little bit. Might be a bit of a prank.” But there was one time – this happened a few times – where I bumped into her boyfriend, and then not half an hour later, not even that long later, she called me to say, “It’s happened again.” So I was like, okay, I don’t think it’s him. So that was something that happened consistently in that house, which was really, really creepy. She ended up never using that room because it just had this really eerie feeling to it.

Anyway, one of the worst times – I felt like a bit of a bad friend because I didn’t go back after this. [laughs] I told her, “I’m not going back to your house after this.” But we had a film night at hers. It was me and her and our boyfriends at the time and a couple of friends. It got quite late, and we were watching a film and everyone fell asleep but me. I was sat with my back to the wall, and on the other side of this wall was the staircase. There was a door next to me. The staircase was behind me, but obviously through the wall.

I started hearing someone coming down the stairs really slowly. I just started going, “No, not hearing it. You’re just imagining it.” I looked round at everyone else in the room; we were all there. There was no one else in the house. There was no way anyone else could’ve been in the house. I was like, “You’re just hearing it, you’re just hearing it.” But then I started hearing someone move the door handle. And when I looked at the door, those footsteps went bang, bang, bang, bang back up the stairs. I was like, oh my God. I was sat there and everyone was asleep and I was frozen with fear, to be honest. I was like, “Okay, let it go. Keep watching the film. Distract yourself a little bit.”

And then it happened again, these really quiet steps down, and then the door handle would twitch and I’d hear someone with their hand like they were about to come into the room. And when I looked, it was bang, bang, bang back up the stairs. At that point – I think it might’ve happened two or three times – I couldn’t handle it anymore. I woke up my boyfriend and was like, “Walk me home now!” It was about three o’clock in the morning. [laughs] I was like, “I am not staying here a second longer. This is terrifying! I’m not doing it anymore!”

So yeah, I made him take me home. My friend was kind about it, but obviously I think she was a bit – she was probably a little bit hurt as well because I was like, “I can’t do this. I can’t stay in this. I don’t know how you live here.” I was so frightened. I woke everyone up screaming as well, like, “Can’t do it! I’ve gotta go!” But yeah, that was the last time I went there. Things kept happening. She was there for about a year and I think it was probably about halfway through the year that that happened.

There’s a sad part to the story as well, because we found out through a friend – I was telling the story to my friend because I was so skeptical at the time as well, and I couldn’t explain it. I was telling a friend this who’s a little bit older than me, and she heard the story and she heard the area of town that it was in, and she was like, “Let’s do a little thinking here.” She told me that someone in her school year had moved out in sad circumstances with his family and had had real problems with his mental health and things, and he lived in that area, or she thought he did. He ended up sadly committing suicide.

She did a little bit of research for me and found a local newspaper online, and I think she had another friend that knew him better as well, and found out that it was that house that he lived in.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

ALISH: Yeah. I think that was only a couple years before my friend moved into that place. So we found that out. I don’t think I told my friend that until she’d moved out. But yeah, that was sad. It was like he was still there and he was still a bit tormented. That was the sad part to the story, really. I hope he’s at peace now in that place.

JIM HAROLD: Yes, that’s very, very sad. We always do mention on the shows, when the topic of suicide comes up, the Suicide Prevention Hotline. I want to mention the one in the UK as well, since you’re from the UK: the Samaritans, which I don’t think we have over here. It’s call 116 123. They’re saying call 116 123. And then in the States, just recently there has been a Suicide Prevention Hotline here – and I’m just looking it up to make sure I have it; I think I know what it is, but I want to make sure I’ve got it right. I think it’s such a great thing that they’ve added. In the U.S., that is 988. That is 988 if you need help in the U.S., and the UK, the Samaritans are available at 116 123.

ALISH: Sorry, I just want to say in the UK there’s a really, really good mental health charity called Mind who have a lot of online resources for people that are struggling with their mental health, and there’s lots of support through Mind charity as well in the UK.

JIM HAROLD: Very good. We appreciate that. Very much it’s a sad story, but I do believe that there are these hauntings, and sometimes it’s sparked by maybe a very sudden or very tragic death indeed. But none of this followed you back to your house or anything? It was solely at your friend’s house?

ALISH: Yeah, it was very much my friend’s house. I don’t think she’s had any problems – she’s lived all over the place; she’s not had any problems, I don’t think, since she’s left there.

JIM HAROLD: Well, Alish, thank you so much for listening to the show. I appreciate it. And I know you said all your friends listen, so hey, Alish’s friends! Thank you for listening to the Campfire, and stay spooky.

ALISH: Thank you so much for having me, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Thank so much for joining us today on the Campfire. I certainly appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks to all of our sponsors. Please support them. And we have some spooky shoutouts here, or a spooky shoutout this week.

This is from Matt, and he says, “Hi, Jim. I was hoping you could wish my wife, Katie, and my son, Connor, a happy birthday. There birthdays are the 14th and 15th of March. It would make their year, as me and my family routinely stay spooky every Thursday and aren’t scared of reruns on off days.” Matt, my pleasure to do so. Katie and Connor, happy birthday! And a big old stay spooky. Thanks for listening.

And if you would like a personalized shoutout from me, a video for your loved one’s birthday, anniversary, graduation, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, special occasion, fill in the blank, go over to cameo.com/thejimharold. That’s c-a-m-e-o dot com slash thejimharold. We made it very inexpensive and a great way to say “happy birthday” or “happy whatever” to someone who likes to stay spooky. Hope you’ll check it out; it helps support our shows.

And thank you for supporting our shows and for listening. We will talk to you next time. And by the way, Campfire submissions are open, too, now. You can put in your Campfire submission at jimharold.com/campfire. We thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody, and stay spooky! Bye-bye.

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

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