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TRANSCRIPT

Living in a haunted house and loving it, next up on the Campfire.

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

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again, and we have a great show for you today. If you’re new here, here’s what we do. We share true stories, real stories, of personal experiences with the strange, the paranormal, the unusual. Could be UFOs, could be ghosts, could be cryptid creatures, a messaged from a beloved loved one who has passed.

Whatever they are, these stories are true and they are absolutely fascinating, as told by the experiencers themselves. We don’t coach them, we don’t tell them to make it scarier. We don’t have to, because these shows are chilling with the content that we’re able to bring you. And sometimes they’re heartwarming, too. We have some heartwarming stories as well. We like to balance out the scales.

Really excited to bring you this week’s show, and welcome to it. If you like the show, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen. That is so important. Make sure that you hit that follow button, that subscribe button to the free shows. Also, rate and review would be most appreciated, too – and while you’re at it, please tell a friend this week about the Campfire.

And now, with no further ado, let’s get right on to the show. It is Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Joining us on the line from Ohio, a fellow Ohioan, O-H-I-O. She’s been listening for about three years, and she’s going to tell us about her Victorian home, and maybe you guessed… it might be haunted. She’s going to tell us all about it. Joey, welcome to the show and tell us about this Victorian home.

JOEY: Yes, thank you for having me. It started back in the ’70s. My grandmother had fallen in love with the home back then, and it was kind of a funny story how we fell into it. She would stop by the house every once in a while and give the homeowner a hard time and say, “One day I’m going to own this house. One day I’m going to own it.” And he was just for sure that he was going to be buried in this house, so he loved it just as much as my grandmother did.

But one day – I think it was 1975-1976 – she stopped by and he answered the door kind of giggling, and she said, “I just have to tell you I’m going to buy this house someday,” and he said, “Well, you stopped by on the right day because I had to declare bankruptcy. So now you can purchase the house.” That was a funny cue into our family owning it.

My parents then purchased it in the ’80s, and then my husband and I purchased it about seven years ago. So it’s been in our family for cute some time now, and we’ve had stories going back all the way to the ’50s. Similar stories of things happening here. So it wasn’t really a great surprise when it started happening to us.

My mother and father kept it kind of tight-lipped for a long time, probably until I was 17 or 18. They finally came clean. All of the stories that they had aligned with what had already happened to me.

I would say one of the first alarming stories that happened to me was when I was 16 and I was asleep in bed. I woke up, it was probably two or three in the morning, and I felt someone lovingly caressing my back, like a mother would. I turned over, expecting to see my mom there, and I could feel the hand shake, like quiver on my back. So I know that I startled whatever was there. I turned over, and of course there was no one there. So that was kind of odd. I thought, “I’m the only one in the room? Yeah, there’s nobody in here with me.”

Then the next morning I brought it up to my mom and she paused and said, “Really?” But she didn’t really question it. She just said, “Okay.” Well, a few years later, she brought it up in conversation because there had been a multitude of other stories. She said, “You know, that one time you told me that the hand was caressing your back, I used to have that happen to me all the time.” So I was like, huh. That was one story she was holding out on me. So that was a relief to know I wasn’t crazy.

Fast forward, my husband and I moved in. We had a multitude of other stories in between the two, but my husband and I moved in. I had some reservations about moving our children in. My husband and I are high school sweethearts, so he was aware that the house is pretty well occupied by people that we can’t see. But I had some reservations about moving my own children in. I knew that I could handle it, but I was worried about them.

So we moved the kiddos in. At the time we only had three of them. Our son was about six or seven. I had to keep him home one day; he had a bad cough. He was in the same room that I had been in. I bring him his juice and check on him and he’s fine. So I go downstairs and I’m doing the dishes. Elbows into the sink. He comes around the corner and says, “Mama, why did you leave me?” I said, “What are you talking about, buddy?” He said, “It felt really nice when you were scratching my back.” I said, “Buddy, that wasn’t your mom.”

So that’s three generations. My mother, myself, and now my son. And most recently, our newest addition – she’s now four, so we’ve been in the house for a little bit, but the four year old came in. This was probably about six months ago. At the time, she was about three. Came into our bedroom, pretty typical anyway. She likes to creep in with her father and I. She tapped me on the nose and said, “Mama, can I climb in bed with you?” Not spooky, right? I said, “Sure.” Pull her on into bed, tuck her underneath, kiss her head, get her all comfortable, and she said, “Thanks, Mama. Now that witchy hand can’t scratch my back anymore.”

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

JOEY: [laughs] Yes. So that was a little spooky to hear at two o’clock in the morning. And she’s actually in a different room than that one. I think they’re pretty intellectual, the people that we live with. Until this year, we had never had a ghost crew or any sort of investigators come into the house. I didn’t want to get them upset because no one had done it in the 30 or 40 years that we know of, since our family has known.

But a good family friend asked to come in, and I was kind of curious. The house has really had an upswing in activity in the last five years. It’s about weekly at this point that something peculiar happens – peculiar enough that we don’t hide it from our children anymore. We have lights coming on while we’re all sitting in the kitchen, or we’ll have a door slam and we’re sitting in the living room. It’s very, very obvious that we have something here, so we’re pretty honest with them.

But we did have the gentleman come through with some investigative equipment. I have not told my children that. But he came through and recorded about three hours, and as of yesterday, he was two hours into his findings and he had sent me 135 voices.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. Do you think that it’s ramped up partially maybe because you’re more cognizant of it now? Do you think it’s mirroring that?

JOEY: It’s possible. I’ve had a couple people stop me throughout my life – I had it in college, I had it when I was expecting our youngest. I’ve had a couple people stop and say, “Did you know that you are the haunted person and maybe not the house?” So I don’t know if it’s growing up in the house that I’m more tuned in because I’m aware of it and I have been – since birth, I’ve been in this house. I don’t know if it’s because we’re lifers, I’ve been here for so long, so we’re aware of it. I don’t know if it’s maybe the kids’ energy bringing them to life and them interacting with the kids more. I have no idea. I don’t know.

JIM HAROLD: You said the house had some interesting history as well.

JOEY: Oh yeah. It was a part of the Underground Railroad for our town. We live in a small town in Ohio. The founder of the town built a house very close by, and then he built this house for his son, and his son was out – I found this in a newspaper. I’m a history nut, so I had to research the house pretty extensively. The founder’s son was out spending the family fortune on booze and women, apparently, and could not be brought back to live in this beautiful home.

So they ended up leasing the home to a man and his two daughters, and we believe that it’s the two daughters that really reside strongly in the home. We’ve been recording our children playing – my baby, I have a recording of her rolling a ball, and you hear a woman yelling at my dog in the background. She spits. It’s so profound. You can hear her spitting. She says, “Give me that dog!” And it was just my daughter and I.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

JOEY: Yeah, it’s really fascinating. My husband was kind of a skeptic initially, and now he calls them my friends. He’s like, “I heard your friend upstairs. Can you go tell them to knock it off?” or “Your friends are turning on the lights again. Can you tell them to buzz off a little bit?” So he’s coming to terms with the fact that maybe we don’t understand everything that our eyes can tell us or cannot tell us.

JIM HAROLD: And do they knock it off? If you say, “Hey, not right now. Now’s not a good time,” do they honor that?

JOEY: It depends, really. I wonder if it depends on the spirit that I’m working with at the time. I think they tend to startle me more. Even though I’ve lived here for 30 some years now, they pick on me a little bit. My sister obviously grew up in the same house; she won’t stay here any longer.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

JOEY: She refuses to come home, yes. and I think that it was her adamant attitude, like “You’re not going to mess with me,” and they would pick on her more. So now I think I’m one of the only ones left behind and they’re like, “Oh, she knows we’re here. We can mess with her. She recognizes that we’re not gone.” So I don’t know. But it’s fun. I really enjoy it.

We wouldn’t have purchased the house and gone through all of this – there are so many strange stories with how we were able to acquire the house. A quick one, I was nervous about purchasing the house. I had spoken with my mother about it; I said, “I just don’t know if the spirits are okay with me coming back.” She kind of laughed and said, “I’m sure they’ll let you know how they feel about it.”

We were here. I was visiting her at the time here at the house, and she walked outside through a swinging door. I went to use the ladies’ room and I came back out expecting the swinging door to be open. I couldn’t walk out through it. The doors on the inside had been locked from the inside. I was the only one in the house and it was deadbolted from the inside. So we took that as a sign that they were probably okay with keeping me in here.

JIM HAROLD: Well, just great stories.

JOEY: It’s really fun. It’s been a really fun experience. We feel really honored that we’re the caretakers for a little while. We’ll see what the future holds, but we’re happy to be here for now.

JIM HAROLD: I hope you’ll come back on the show and share more stories and developments as they come along.

JOEY: Thank you so much for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Thank you, Joey. Great stories. Very interesting, living in a haunted house and loving it.

JOEY: Yes, very much. Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Dresden is on the line from Ohio, and they have some very interesting stories for us. We’re going to start off with one that revolves around – and this sounds utterly terrifying to many people, including myself – a room full of dolls. Dresden, thank you for joining us and please tell us your story.

DRESDEN: Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Thank you.

DRESDEN: This happened when I was in junior high, in high school, so it’s pre-2009. I had this friend and she lived in one of the oldest houses in town. It wasn’t a town; it was a township. It wasn’t big enough to be a town, so a real small town, too small to be a town. [laughs] Her house was from the 1800s, so old house. You know something’s got to be going on haunting-wise.

It was right at the crossroad corner of my road and the main road, so I basically lived down the street from her, and we hung out a lot. I’d go as far as to say she was my best friend during that period of my life. I spent a lot of time at her house. It was full of all this stuff that her mom had collected, like themed stuff. Her mom had themes to each room of the house.

You entered the little kitchen at the side of the house by the driveway, and across from there there’s the counter bar, and then you go into the dining room. Then from the dining room, you go past the staircase, where one of my stories is. It’s this old wooden double-wide staircase because it’s a very old house. There’s a Christmas-themed room that’s all mauve and gold, and then past that is this glass paned doorway that leads into the doll room, which her mom said was the music room.

JIM HAROLD: But it was full of dolls.

DRESDEN: Oh yeah, absolutely packed. You know those satin-capped harlequin masks and stuff?

JIM HAROLD: Actually, I have one of those. It used to be on my set because my late mother-in-law had it. My one daughter absolutely hates it. She’s like, “Get that thing out of here (expletive) (expletive)!” [laughs] But yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

DRESDEN: Yeah. She had a whole lot of those. She had the little doll ones that had the little bodies, and she had the masks, and they lined the majority of the room. But there was also this big glass cabinet that was built into the wall that had a variety of Victorian clothing, very frilly porcelain dolls, like the classic ones you don’t want to walk into a room full of, usually.

JIM HAROLD: They’re all staring at you.

DRESDEN: Yeah. This was me, and I’ve always been a really avid fan of horror and stuff, so of course I convinced my friend, “Hey, I’m staying over for this project we’re working on for school anyway, so can we sleep in the doll room?” She’s like, “Yeah, okay.” So we do. Really uncomfortable fancy furniture. It matches. It’s all roses and stuff. It was really hard to get to sleep.

Eventually I do, and I don’t know if discomfort has anything to do with causing sleep paralysis and stuff, but I eventually get to sleep and when I wake up, I’m staring across the room at the curtains and stuff, my eyelids are heavy, but I’m awake. I realize, “Oh, I’m having sleep paralysis,” because it had happened to me before and I researched it. I just start casually looking around and I see this figure that’s a staticky figure, black and white, the face is a shadow. I don’t know what era the suit was from, but it was wearing a black suit with a white undershirt and a tie. It was the silhouette of a person in a suit with their hands in their pockets.

As soon as I get my eyes to fully focus on them, they flicker to another part of the room. In my hearing, I can hear a static sound, and when they flicker to another part of the room, it sounds like the changing of a station between two static channels. I’m like, what the heck? I watch this figure flicker a little closer to me, and then a little closer again, and I start – if you wiggle your fingers and toes while having sleep paralysis, it’ll help you snap out of it, and I’ve been doing that this whole time while I’m watching this thing, because I’m kind of spooked.

JIM HAROLD: I don’t blame you. That would spook me in a room full of dolls.

DRESDEN: Yeah, all those dolls were behind me, though, so thankfully they weren’t staring at me. It was just the eyeless masks. That’s much better, right? [laughs] So it’s flickering around the room and eventually it flickers out of my vision, and I get myself to be able to move and wake up. My friend is still completely asleep, and I wake her up because we have to get ready for school anyway. I was like, “Hey, I saw something.” She was like, “Oh yeah, my house is haunted.” I was like, I knew it, I knew it. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: You have more guts than me, wanting to specifically sleep in that doll room. Again, that takes a lot of courage.

DRESDEN: Courage or just being a goth teenager, thinking it’s cool and stuff, and get you past a bit of that fear. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: What a story, what a story. Do you have a fear of dolls at this point? Did that scar you when it comes to dolls?

DRESDEN: No, actually, I’m an artist and I’m looking into making dolls and masks. That’s one of the reasons I liked that room. I don’t personally find that stuff very scary, but I know other people do.

I actually had one more story that happened in that house. It’s just a quick one.

JIM HAROLD: Sure, go ahead. Tell it to us.

DRESDEN: This happened on the stairs that are by the Christmas room before you reach the doll room, those double-wide stairs. I was following my friend up those stairs, and it was just a blank white wall next to me, and I was on the side with the banister, and out of the corner of my eye – and I wonder now if it was the same figure that I saw during my sleep paralysis – I saw someone in a suit passing me going down the stairs as I was going up.

And this was in the middle of the stairs. I was looking up the stairs. No one was coming down, no one else was going up. It was just me and my friend going up the stairs, and I saw this figure. I just felt the air of someone moving past me, and I turned and looked and there was no one there, of course.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

DRESDEN: Yeah, I wonder now if that was the same figure.

JIM HAROLD: It might’ve been. That certainly was a spooky house. Like your friend said, definitely a haunted place.

DRESDEN: Oh yeah, it was pretty cool.

JIM HAROLD: Dresden, can’t wait to hear your other stories. Thank you for being a part of the Campfire.

DRESDEN: Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Next up is Zoe from Texas, and boy, does she have a story for us going back to her childhood. She was listening to Astonishing Legends, and our show popped up on Spotify and she checked it out, and now she’s a fan of both, which is a great thing to be. Zoe, thank you so much for calling in tonight. Tell us your story. Boy, this is a memorable childhood memory.

ZOE: Yes, it is. It’s one that my sister and I actually reminiscence about. I tried to keep my description intentionally vague for some wow factor, but I hope you enjoy it.

This happened when I was in elementary school in downtown Houston. I must have been – it’s been so long at this point; I must’ve been maybe seven or eight years old. For some context to this, because I always feel a little bit crazy, as I’m sure a lot of people do at first –

JIM HAROLD: Well, don’t. You’re in good company here, because we like strange stories. Don’t worry about it.

ZOE: Thank you. I appreciate the vote of confidence. But to add some merit to this, I grew up as a pretty sick child, and I spent a lot of my sick days up in my father’s laboratory. He worked in the nanotechnology department up at Rice University, which was super cool. I got to see lots of flashing lights and gizmos, and anything scientific, I was exposed to from a very young age. So when this event happened, I went, “Huh, something is definitely wrong here.”

The night this happened, if I can set the scene a little bit, we were living in a ranch style house not too far off from the Med Center, a couple of streets down, if anyone is familiar with that area. We lived on the corner, so we were always accustomed to big flashing lights of sirens and people stopping at the four-way stop. We could always see the shadows dancing across the windows and seeing the way that the light danced across the walls and stuff at night as we fell asleep.

Well, one night we had gone to bed as usual, and my sister and I shared a bunkbed in a pretty large room. We had fallen asleep, and I specifically remember waking up and the time on the clock was 2:54. I remember going – the number 4 is such a weird number, but it was very specific. I couldn’t move. I just felt the heaviness of the air in the room pressing down on me and this immediate terror. I was going, “This is weird.”

As I was realizing, “I can’t move my body,” and you feel that impending anxiety of “something is wrong, something is wrong,” my eyes looked around the room. We had the bunkbed set up on one side of the wall, and across the room we had this massive double sliding door closet, so they would slide from the left and right, and my stuff was on the right side and my sister’s stuff was on the left. To the left wall was the entrance to the room, and on the right side of the room were the windows.

I was looking towards the window, and I saw this face in the window.

JIM HAROLD: Oh boy.

ZOE: It had giant bug-looking eyes. I really just remember the prominence of its face and how squished the nose was, and the pinched lips, and it was just staring at me. Around where its shoulder and its hand would be, the glass on the window was shining a goldish green. The whole light behind this face was a bright green color, like I had never seen before.

As I stared, I was trying not to make eye contact, just trying to make yourself feel small, as one does in that situation when there’s an intruder. I noticed that the color of the glass really started to glow into this fluorescent color, and I started to see it – not liquify, but kind of dematerialize, and this hand started pushing through the window. I was terrified, and I closed my eyes as tight as I could. I was like, “I’m just not going to look at it. This isn’t happening.” I’m six/seven years old. I don’t know what the word “hallucination” is, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I was thinking, to my limited vocabulary.

I opened my eyes, and in the closet across the room I saw a very similar figure start to come out of my sister’s side of the closet. It also had this typical alien-esque looking figure, short in stature, abnormally long arms, grey skin. I couldn’t see it walking towards me; they were just materializing in the room and getting closer. It wasn’t like they had to move. They just kind of shifted, whatever, I don’t know how to explain it.

But I knew there was one in the window and a hand was coming through the window, and this new figure had suddenly appeared in my room and was coming through my closet, and the only thing I could do was just shut my eyes and try not to scream. Not that I could scream, because I couldn’t breathe. It was so heavy in the room.

Eventually what I ended up doing was just softly thinking of the Lord’s Prayer – and I know this sounds kind of silly to some people, but it worked for me, so I still vouch by it.

JIM HAROLD: We’ve had other calls recently where somebody did the same thing, and it worked too.

ZOE: I’ve had several other experiences where I have used the Lord’s Prayer. I’m like, you know what, it works if it works, and that’s what I go to now. But I started saying the Lord’s Prayer in my head and going through the whole thing until eventually, in my head, I screaming it out loud.

And for whatever reason, the heaviness on me immediately lifted, or lifted pretty quickly, and as soon as I didn’t feel that weight on me, I bolted out of the room screaming. Ran through the bedroom door, jumped in bed with my mom and my dad. They sleep with the door closed. I was like “Please don’t have the door locked tonight, oh my God.” So I jump into bed with them and close the door and go to bed. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m finally safe. Finally safe.” I tried not to think of the lights and the creatures that I just saw in my room.

The next morning we were sitting around the breakfast table, and my mom is like, “Zoe, why’d you hop into bed with us? You haven’t done that in years.” I was like, “Well, I had this really scary dream that there were these two aliens.” E.T. had come out, so we knew what aliens were. I was like, “I had this horrible dream that aliens were in the room, and one of them was coming through the window.” My sister goes, “You saw that too?”

JIM HAROLD: Oh boy.

ZOE: She was sleeping on the top bunk. I was like, “Yes. they kind of had these pinched mouths and really big eyes, and one of them was staring through the window and I saw the window dematerialize.” My sister runs out to the office, grabs a paper and pen, comes back to the breakfast table, and she starts drawing them.

Of course, our parents are like, “They’re joking.” My sister’s a little bit older than me, two years or so. They’re just laughing their butts off because they think this is some elaborate joke. But my sister and I are sitting there at the breakfast table perfectly drawing out the faces, all of their facial features, their arms approximately landing mid-thigh, and are just in total agreement. Like, yes, their eyes, their noses, their mouths, everything.

My sister pauses and she goes, “How did you get up?” I was like, “I just said the Lord’s Prayer.” She’s like, “No, how did you leave the room?” I said, “I just ran through it.” She goes, “But how did you get past the one in the doorway?” I said, “What?” She said, “Zoe, you ran straight through one of them as you left the room.” And I had no idea. I don’t know if it was something I was not processing, but I had no idea. But my sister swears up and down that there was one in the window, one coming out of the closet, and then one standing in the doorway that I had to go through in order to run to my parents’ room.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness.

ZOE: For years, my parents thought that we were just carrying on this elaborate joke, until 25, almost 30 years later, we still talk about it. So that’s my story. I don’t know if anyone else has an experience like that, but I haven’t heard.

JIM HAROLD: Other people have reported having seen aliens as children. We had one not too long ago, maybe a week or two ago. So yes, I have heard reports like this. It would be terrifying for an adult, so I can only imagine as a child.

The other story I heard, somebody was in the same room with their sister. So there are parallels to this story. And I guess in a way, obviously you don’t want to have your sibling experience something traumatic, but in a way it’s kind of good because you have some validation.

ZOE: Oh yeah, absolutely. I feel like if someone was not there to witness that with me – and not just say “Yes, I saw it,” but to sit down and draw those images of what we saw together and be in total agreement – I don’t know where I would be.

The one thing, though, is after I left the room, I had asked my sister, “Mel, what happened? What happened to you?” She said, “The last thing I remember is” – the three aliens surrounding her, one at the foot of the bed and one at the head of the bed on her left and right side, all leaning over her, and then she blacked out.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

ZOE: I feel terrible because I wasn’t there for her. She jokes, “Zoe, you abandoned me.” I’m like, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” [laughs] But I think she feels definitely validated that I was there for that too, because from some of the things we’ve talked about, it’s been a recurring thing for her in her life to have these kinds of visitations.

JIM HAROLD: Zoe, thank you so much for joining us tonight on the Campfire.

ZOE: You are very welcome. Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Emily is on the line from Iowa. Her son Brayden told her about the show, so Brayden, I know you’re a faithful listener, so thank you so much and stay spooky. And Emily has, in her own right here – this is a story, when I read it, I’m like, ooh, this is a good one. I can’t wait to hear this. So Emily, thank you for joining us and please tell us this story. It sounds like it’s going to be something else.

EMILY: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jim. I’m excited to share my story. Growing up as a kid, I was very close with my grandma. My parents were divorced, and there was a lot of chaos with that, so she and I were very close. And then when I was 11, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died a few months later. That was obviously really tough for me. I was in elementary school when it happened.

Then a few years later, when I was in junior high, I was at a sleepover one night for a birthday party with a bunch of girls who I hadn’t gone to elementary school with and who I was just getting to know. They didn’t know anything about my past, really. Someone suggested we play with a Ouija board, which I had never done before.

So we were sitting around and playing with the Ouija board and messing around, not really getting too much out of it, and then someone suggested that we should try to talk to someone who one of us knew. I chimed in and I said, “Well, my grandma died. We could try reaching out to her.” So we did. We asked, “Is Mabel Shelton there? Can we speak to her?” The Ouija board said yes.

I was kind of skeptical, so I said, “Okay, if you’re really her, can you tell us what the name of your oldest grandson is?” Because that was something that I was the only one who knew. Sure enough, the board spelled out D-A-N, my cousin Dan. I was like, okay, maybe this is a little something here.

We asked a few more questions, and at this point I was starting to get kind of emotional. At that point I asked, “Grandma, if you could give me any message, what would it be?” At first she spelled out B-O-P. I was like, “Bop? What? [laughs] I don’t understand.” Then she started spelling again and she spelled out B-E (space) and I was like, oh, okay, and it ended up spelling out “be optimistic.” At that point I was really emotional, and we said goodbye and I left the room at that point.

It was such a meaningful message to me. Like I said, I was so close with her. After she died, a few months after that, I had fallen into a really deep depression and I was really struggling. I was at that point probably a 14-year-old girl going to junior high, which is everyone’s favorite time, and I was really, really struggling. So to get that message from her was so meaningful. Today I have it tattooed on my arm so that every time I look down, I remember her message to be optimistic.

JIM HAROLD: Aww, how neat is that. Wow, that’s great. Just that one statement, that did it for you. And again, that affirmation with the other family member and spelling the name that nobody else – that was the interesting part. It was a new group of friends, so it wasn’t anybody you really knew who would know the family history. That’s pretty wild.

EMILY: Yeah. Like I said, I went into it pretty skeptical, like, “Okay, we’re just going to do this for fun,” and it ended up being such a moving experience and something that I still hold dear 20 some years later.

JIM HAROLD: Do you get the temptation to pull the Ouija board out of the closet, maybe, and try it again?

EMILY: I’ve thought about it. I’ve never messed with a Ouija board since then. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever done it. I’ve thought about it, but really I got so much out of that one, I don’t know that I need any more.

JIM HAROLD: That’s great. Well, Emily, thanks so much again for listening and for sharing this great story, this touching story. And again, thanks, Brayden. Thanks for sharing the word about the Campfire.

EMILY: Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having me.

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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: Erica is on the line from Missouri, and she has a story about her grandparents. Erica, thank you for joining us, and as I mentioned offline, very sad story about your grandparents. Sorry what happened, happened, that you’re going to tell us about, but there is hope.

ERICA: Yes.

JIM HAROLD: Go ahead and tell us your story.

ERICA: Thank you, Jim. In 2013, we lost our grandparents, my grandparents on my mother’s side, to a housefire. It was early morning the fire started upstairs and went down through the kitchen and one of the side rooms. It was more smoke inhalation that they perished from.

The day of the fire, after everything settled down, firefighters were gone, my cousin and I decided to go to the house to try to retrieve anything of value. We were trying to find my grandmother’s Bible, my grandfather’s ring, just different things that we felt like we should probably get out of the house to protect.

As we were going through the house, after firefighters have left, it’s just a mess. You’ve got smoke, smell of smoke, and everything’s wet. The stench of everything is just unbearable, plus when you top it off with emotions, it’s even worse. I didn’t last long in the house. I had to get out and try to catch my breath and get my emotions in check. So I went outside of the house and was just pacing up and down the sidewalk.

I felt something on the bottom of my shoe, like when you get a rock stuck in your shoe. It just hits the concrete and it’s like, “What is on my shoe?” I looked at my foot, and I had my grandmother’s angel pin – it’s like a little lapel pin – stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I thought, oh my gosh. To me it was a sign that she was there, or they were there. On that actual day. It really just hit. So I clutched that pin and held it.

Anyway, fast forward about three to four years later, I follow Chip Coffey. He’s a psychic medium.

JIM HAROLD: Sure, I’ve met Chip.

ERICA: Yeah. He came into our town and was doing a gallery reading. I had been to one of his gallery readings before, not long after this happened. We didn’t get anything. He didn’t pick us for a reading or anything like that. But he was amazing. I thought I’d love to go back and see him. So when he was coming, it was on April 15th, and that was a significant day because my grandfather was a taxman, and I felt, “That’s a sign. It’s April 15th. I think it’s a sign to go.”

So I went by myself, and he was doing his gallery reading, and he called on me. When I went, I took that pin that I found, the angel pin, and I had also my rosary beads and my grandmother’s pearls just to help maybe get them to come through. So I was clutching those items in my hand, and when he called on me, I stood up and he asked who I was trying to reach out to. I said, “My grandparents, or my grandfather.” He said, “I have a male figure coming through. Is he on your mother’s side or your father’s side?” I said, “He’s on the mother’s side.”

He started laughing and he said, “He said your mom’s a pain in the” – you know what. A pain in the butt. I was like, that’s kind of rude. I was like, “Well, I guess she can be. She’s really not.” He starts laughing and said, “He’s not meaning it mean. She made him do things he didn’t want to do.” I was like, “That is on point.” My mom moved out of state and she wasn’t close to him to help him with things, so she was constantly calling, making sure he was doing the things he should do, going to the doctor when he was sick or whatnot. She was really trying to get them out of that house because they’d outgrown it, we couldn’t take care of it, that sort of thing.

I said, “Yeah, that’s definitely – you’ve got him.” He touched on a few other things that resonated, and then he said, “He’s mentioning a shoe, something about a shoe.” At the time I was like, “I really don’t know what he’s talking about.” He said, “He just keeps bringing up this show.” I was a runner at the time; I was constantly running holes in my shoes. I said, “Maybe it’s my running shoes.” He said, “No.” I said, “I have boys. Their shoes smell. They stink.” He said, “It’s not that. Just take that with you. It may come to you later, but it’s something significant with a shoe.” I was like, “Okay.”

Anyway, he ended it. He said, “He knows you’re angry at how it happened. Don’t be angry. Just remember his laugh,” and that’s how it all ended. It was kind of amazing. I was by myself, and I called my mom instantly and told her everything, and then I went home. I was talking to my husband about it, and I was telling him everything he said. Then I showed him what I carried with me – my rosary beads, my grandmother’s pearls, and I said, “And then this pin that was stuck in my shoe.” And as soon as I said that, I said, “That’s what he was referring to. The pin in my shoe.”

You’re just in the moment. You’re caught up with all these emotions and you can’t think straight when all this information is coming at you. That right there was just validation that that pin in my shoe – it was more validation that they were there on the other side with us when everything was happening. Yeah, that’s my story.

JIM HAROLD: It’s one of those things where they do get their message out one way or the other. It’s got to be reassuring to know, despite everything that happened, they are still with you.

ERICA: They are. And there’s been multiple signs throughout these years, so I definitely always feel them with me. And if anybody ever has a chance to see Chip Coffey in a gallery reading, go for it. Whether you get a reading or not, his messages to the people around you – it’s just amazing, his work.

JIM HAROLD: Erica, thank you so much for sharing this very personal story on the Campfire.

ERICA: Yes. Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Vanessa is on the line from Oregon. We’re so glad to have her on, and she’s going to tell one of those stories – this is a subject that fascinates me. I didn’t realize it was such a thing until I started doing the Campfire, but she’s going to talk about a possible guardian angel. Vanessa, welcome to the show. I know you’ve been listening for several years. Thank you for that, and thank you for being a part of the show. Please tell us your story.

VANESSA: Thank you for having me, Jim. It’s such an honor to be here. I’ve listened to you for a long time.

JIM HAROLD: Thank you.

VANESSA: It starts when I was very, very young. I’m a twin, and I always thought from a very, very young age that we had a brother. It was really funny because I was like, “She’s hiding a brother from me. What’s going on?” We were the only kids at the time, so it’s like, “That just doesn’t make any sense.” I just didn’t get it.

As time went on, I kept thinking I had a brother. “I have a brother. He’s here somewhere. He’s just hiding.” With young kids, I really think they are more open to things. Of course, as I got older, younger teens I think, I wasn’t in touch at all.

At that point we were in high school, maybe freshman/sophomore, and my mom started a new business. It was long hours, it was burning the candle at both ends. She told me she was really struggling. I was like, “Oh my gosh, Mom, that’s really scary. You’re driving home really, really late at night.” She had a long commute. She’s like, “When I’m sitting in my office and so struggling,” she said she saw a figure that would look in her window in her office. She said, “Sometimes when I’m going out to the parking lot, I see this figure in the side view mirror. It’s like I have this guardian that’s watching me, that’s going to help me” and all this stuff.

Well, that freaked me out. I slept with the lights on for a good week. Fast forward, I’ve noticed throughout my life, I’ve been very lucky and things have happened smoothly. Stuff that, looking back now, I’m like, “There’s no way that should’ve worked out.” Later on, I was thinking, “There has to be somebody watching over me.” I just felt like it. I was lucky enough to have my grandparents for a long time, and friends and stuff. When I know I had somebody watching over me, they were still alive. I was like, “I don’t understand who this could be or what it is.”

Fast forward – this is embarrassing to say, but it was only a couple years ago, and I was watching this Netflix show about near-death experiences and paranormal experiences and stuff. It came to me in an instant, in an absolute instant: “Oh my gosh, it’s my Uncle Mike. It’s not my brother. It’s my mom’s brother.”

This is someone I never knew. He passed away in a motorcycle accident at 20 years old, so it was way before we were born. She’d always talked about him. Later on she remarried and had two boys and named one of my brothers after him. He was very much talked about and everything, but I never knew him. In my naivete, I was like, “I have to know the person that’s going to watch over me.” I thought that’s how it worked.

But no, I finally figured out, oh my gosh, it’s my Uncle Mike. It made so much sense after that. I was kind of nervous about talking to you tonight – I don’t know why – but right when I left from work, just about five minutes to 5:00 when I leave, I got the ringing in my ear, and that’s what happens when I get kind of stressed or worried about something, or nervous. I get that ringing in my ear and it’s like, “It’s going to be fine.” And that’s always happened. He’s always there.

There’s just been so many instances that things could’ve gone so badly, and it didn’t. My sister and I were the classic latchkey kids, but from a very young age. We were about five years old. Throughout all those years, nothing bad ever happened. We never got heard. We never got lost. Nothing bad ever happened.

Throughout the years, things have been – even as recently as six months ago, one of my nephews who was just a couple months old at that point was visiting, and my other nephew was playing pool and a pool ball blew off the table and was within inches of his head. Like, how did that not hurt him. It was so intense, and I got so emotional. I was like, “Oh my gosh, that was Uncle Mike. Whew. That was him.” It’s comforting.

JIM HAROLD: That’s exactly what I was going to ask you. This seems to be a positive in your life, for sure.

VANESSA: Oh, absolutely. It’s just so funny how I was so aware of it at such a young age, and then you get to your teenage years and you’re like, “Eh, I know everything.” And then later on, as I finally realized – reflection is a big deal, meditation is a big deal, so you’re like, okay, there is something here. I tried to figure it out, and then finally – and maybe I wasn’t supposed to figure it out before I did. I really think that things happen the way that they’re supposed to happen.

JIM HAROLD: It’s a great story, Vanessa. Thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire tonight.

VANESSA: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been so much fun.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Kirk from New York State. The thing is that Kirk said he was never going to tell this story to anybody, but then two very important people said, “Hey, you need to tell this story on the Campfire.” Those are his kids, Samuel and Miley, both big fans of the Campfire. So Samuel and Miley, good job. Way to get Dad on the show. Stay spooky, guys, and thanks for listening.

Kirk is going to tell us a classic ghost story from his childhood. Can’t wait to hear it. Kirk, tell us what happened.

KIRK: Yes. basically, I grew up in a small town in Vermont. My parents were avid churchgoers. We had a lot of friends in the church, and I had met a new friend about the age that my son is now, so I probably would’ve been about nine or ten years old.

They were new to the area and new to the church, and we had planned a sleepover. Their family had moved into a pretty old colonial home, and it had one of those big fireplaces in the center of the house that fed four rooms. Two fireplaces upstairs and two fireplaces downstairs, and it heated this great, big, beautiful farmhouse.

The family was going to be up the road, and we were going to have – well, the mom and dad were going to be up the road and we were going to have a sleepover. My friend and I, and another friend was invited but he couldn’t make it. But then the older sister was going to watch us and she was going to have some friends over. So the parents laid down the law and gave the rules and said, “We’ll just be up the road. We’ll be back shortly.” So we commenced a plan in pestering the older sister, and then her friends gradually showed up. One of them showed up with a Ouija board.

JIM HAROLD: Uh-oh.

KIRK: The sister was kind of reluctant. She knew what her parents thought of that and instantly disagreed. Us being quite a bit younger than them, we didn’t really pay much attention to it. But somehow the other friend had convinced them eventually through the night that they should bring that up to her room. Her room was joined to one of these rooms with the fireplace. So they lit some candles, and my friend and I were out in the hall and playing with our little matchbox cars, and we were bugging them off and on. They were like, “Hey, get out. We’re in here doing this and you’re not invited,” whatever. Being younger, you had to listen.

This is going to be the part why I wasn’t going to tell the story. As they were playing with their game, I noticed their candles on the hearth. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a candle when the wax gets up on the wick and it crackles and sparks. I had noticed that, and it poofed way up. Both of the candles went out. We could hear the girls in there, off and on, asking little questions, but we couldn’t hear what they were asking or anything.

I noticed the candle do this huge sparkle and then poof way up and then it went out, and then these girls were instantly terrified. They were running over the top of each other to get out of the room. They were most obviously terrified. I mean, they were crying, they were seriously pushing each other and trying to run over the top of each other to get out of this room. The older sister grabbed her brother’s arm and looked at me very serious and she’s like, “Come with me down the stairs now.”

I was like, “What’s going on?” We were just kids. I was like, this is not a normal thing. The three girls were just hysterical. They were crying and sitting around an island in the kitchen and they had called the parents to come home or whatever. They were screaming and whatever before this, so I was a little bit in shock. I was like, obviously I’m not going to be staying here tonight. Something is definitely wrong.

Being as young as I was, I was kind of sheltered from the details. Now, a few years later, quite a few years later, I had seen this friend at a bar. Somehow this story had come up, and he’s like, “I got the details of that night,” and I had to hear them.

He’s like, “We didn’t know when my parents had bought the house that the original owners” – now this house was probably built in the late 1800s. I think I mentioned that, not sure. Nobody really did any investigating on the history or anything, but there had been an accident there. And apparently what those girls saw when those candles poofed up and went out, whatever questions they were asking, was the apparition of a very burned little boy, and it rushed at them according to them.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

KIRK: Yeah. Could you imagine? I probably would’ve passed out if I saw something like that because I’m a major chicken. [laughs] Especially being little like that. But anyways, that night I did not spend the night, and all these years later I hear about this.

Well, according to the research that they did, I guess a brother had been playing with a younger sibling and had pushed the sibling, and he had fallen over into the fireplace while it was going, unconscious, and it burned him to death. They thought that they had maybe summoned that child or whatever.

When I heard that, I was like, oh my goodness, I can’t even believe – I didn’t see the apparition or anything. I only saw the corner of the hearth. But when I heard that, I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. If I’d ever seen that, that probably would’ve changed me, you know?

JIM HAROLD: Sure, absolutely. The thing is, when you reach out, you don’t necessarily know what’s going to reach back.

KIRK: That’s right. And being a Christian, we were always taught to reach out to God and to stay faithful and not invite things like that. I know the older sister knew that, and the way that my friend tells it – I wish he could’ve been here to tell the story with me because the way he tells it is much better a job than I did. But yeah, good story.

JIM HAROLD: I will tell you one thing, that would be a frightening scenario, particularly if you were a kid. To think you were just playing around and all of a sudden you see this burnt apparition, wow, that’s something else. Kirk, thank you again for being on the show, and a special shout-out again to Samuel and Miley. Stay spooky. Kirk, thanks for being on the show tonight.

KIRK: So much fun. Thanks.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the line is Madge from Colorado. She has been a big supporter of the shows over the years and she’s been a caller in the past, and she has – I guess you would call it a multifaceted story for us tonight. Madge, welcome to the show and please tell us about your experience.

MADGE: Thanks, Jim. My story happened on December 30th of last year. I live a few miles east of Boulder, Colorado. On that date, a small grassfire grew into one of the most destructive wildfires in Colorado’s history. I will start off my s tory at the point where we realized we needed to evacuate.

I had my two adult children with me at my house visiting for the holidays, and for whatever reason we didn’t get the earlier alerts, so when we got our evacuation notice, they said we needed to leave within 10 minutes.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

MADGE: Yeah. It was quite a mad scramble. I have six pets. We were getting them into two cars and grabbing whatever we could think of. We headed out, and by the time we got on the road, the smoke had really rolled into the neighborhood. We could start to hear all the sirens from fire departments. One of the eeriest feelings was when we were hearing explosions, which I assume were propane tanks or gas tanks of cars left behind. The signal was clear that the fire was burning in neighborhoods and people were losing their homes.

We hadn’t really initially thought of where to go, but we ended up at this theater. I’m on the board of directors there; I knew it would be empty. I had a key, and I thought initially we would just go there and stay for a little while and regroup, figure out where we were going to go. It was further from the fires, so we felt like it was pretty safe. But once we got in and got the animals settled and everything, we thought, “We might as well stay one night here and then figure out what to do after that.”

The theater is about 135 years old, and it was originally a church and then was turned into a library and became a theater. There’s a lot of folklore around this building being haunted. I’ve even experienced some weird things before. But it is a very old building, so electrical problems could be chalked up to that. Strange noises and those kinds of things. We have named the ghost “Mary,” and it’s a tradition in the theater that you greet her and you say goodbye to her.

But I’d maintained my skepticism over the years because I thought it could be just overactive imaginations. But those feelings would start to change as the night wore on.

We got settled into the building and we were, of course, looking for any information about what was going on with the fire. It looked really, really grim. Our areas had been in a profound, severe drought, and there were 100-mile-an-hour winds. The reports were they were having a really hard time getting it under control and it was definitely burning people’s homes. We knew that our home, my home, was in the path of the fire, but it really depended a lot on what happened with the winds and everything.

Around midnight we decided we would try to get some sleep. My daughter decided to sleep in one of the dressing rooms, and my son and I each took one side of the theater, and we tried to put our phones down and just get a little rest.

Sometime around two in the morning, my son came to me and said he was really having trouble sleeping and he wanted to go for a walk. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had seen something on Reddit that showed that our street was on fire.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

MADGE: He didn’t want to share that with me because he wasn’t sure. There was so much inaccurate information coming that he just kept it to himself, and I’m sure that was a heavy burden. But he went off to do his walk, and I fell back to sleep.

Sometime later, I woke up again because I have a little toy poodle mix – she’s a very friendly little dog, and I could feel her tail wagging really vigorously next to me. She was sleeping right beside me. I opened my eyes and there was a woman standing right near me. For whatever reason – and I don’t quite understand it – I was surprised, but I didn’t feel fear. She bent over and whispered something to me. I couldn’t quite understand what she said, but she had such a calm, kind demeanor that I felt some of my anxiety going away, and I felt this sense of wellbeing. Then she just walked off into the darkness. It was very dark in the theater.

JIM HAROLD: Did you perceive it at that time as a ghost or as a person?

MADGE: I was unsure whether it was – it felt very real. But I think at some point I realized that there was a sort of spiritual aspect to it. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. It was a very odd experience. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t feel fear. I just felt reassured. Part of it was maybe my little dog seemed so happy to see her too. I don’t know. But it was very odd.

I went back to sleep. I suppose you could say maybe it was a dream. It really felt very real, though. And then about six in the morning, I got up and my son was up. The reports had been that the fire was under control. It wasn’t completely out, but it wasn’t spreading, and an evacuation order had been lifted in the neighborhood near ours. My son decided to drive over and see if he could see what happened to our house.

He left, and when he left my daughter came out of the dressing room and she said, “I don’t care where we go tonight, but I’m not spending another night in this theater.” I said, “I know, it’s so uncomfortable.” We all were sleeping on the floor. She said, “No, that wasn’t the issue.” She said in the middle of the night, she heard very clearly two women talking in the dressing room next to hers. She got up to see who was there and she pulled back the curtain of the dressing room and the sound immediately stopped, and there was no one in the dressing room. She found that very unnerving. She checked that her brother and I were still there and we were asleep. So she felt it was very strange, and she definitely wanted to not spend another night there.

My son was able to get to our street, and when he called, he had this immense sound of relief in his voice as he was able to say that our neighborhood had been spared.

JIM HAROLD: Oh, good.

MADGE: But he did say that driving through, it was really, really heartbreaking. More than 1,000 people lost their homes that night. It was just devastating. He came back to the theater and we were talking, and of course we felt relief and gratitude, but tremendous sadness for everyone who lost so much.

We did tell my son about our visitations, and he goes, “I have one too.” He had a story as well. He had woken up in the middle of the night and heard people – for him it was a larger group of people talking, but they were talking quietly. He said it reminded him of the way people talk after church, sort of reflective and subdued. It was clear there was actually no one else in the building with us, but he had heard the voices too, which was really strange.

I don’t know exactly what it all meant, but I do feel like whatever spirits were there were maybe trying to offer a little bit of sympathy or comfort to us, being frightened people who were seeking shelter on that really awful night.

JIM HAROLD: I’ve got to say, I believe the paranormal is a continuum and that there’s some spooky, scary stuff – and I know a couple years ago you called in about a story on the scarier side, the more sinister side – but I think it can have a comforting side, too. And obviously it seems like you guys experienced that. I’m so sad for the people who lost their homes, but I’m so glad that you all were spared from that.

MADGE: Thank you, yeah. People are very determined to rebuild, but it’s been a huge blow to the community. It’s just hard to wrap your head around something happening that quickly, you know?

JIM HAROLD: I was out in Boulder a few years ago. What a beautiful, beautiful area of the world. It absolutely is. Madge, thank you so much for your longtime listenership and support, and thanks for being a part of the Campfire.

MADGE: Oh, thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: We have a return caller. Dani is on the line from Ohio, a fellow Buckeye. Always good to talk with a fellow Buckeye. Dani was on last year, and this time she’s going to talk to us about something – a lot of times people say, “There’s a haunting in my house, but I will tell whatever it is to leave me alone if I don’t want to be bothered, and it respects that and goes away.” That’s what I hear most of the time. But apparently Dani has had a very different experience. Dani, welcome to the show and please tell us what happened.

DANI: Thanks for having me. Yeah, that’s exactly what this is: when asking something to leave you alone doesn’t work. It was about eight years ago, roughly. Me and my dad were living in an apartment that was attached to the backside of an old bar, like how you see in cities, where they’ll have little shopping areas. Sometimes you see apartments over the businesses. It was kind of a setup like that.

We ended up living in that house because he knew the landlord somehow. She had also at one point owned the bar, and somehow got this apartment and then rented it out to me and my dad. The first couple months were fine. Nothing weird happened; everything was regular. I was working weird, kind of late shift hours, and my dad works really early shift hours, so we were almost never in the house at the same time. So we didn’t really get to corroborate stories until halfway through this weird fiasco.

Months go by, everything is fine, and then I inherit a cat from my ex-stepmom. I get this cat, and because of that, I start spending more time at home and stop going out and staying out really late. I start working more reasonable hours so that I’m at home more time with my cat. And because I was there longer, I think I noticed more things happening. It would be like doors creaking open and footsteps. I would think I would hear somebody tinkering around with dishes in the kitchen downstairs but I would be home alone.

I always would shrug it off and write it off as being weird, and then eventually I asked my dad, “Hey, when you’re here alone, do you hear weird stuff or hear things drop or fall off of shelves without you being around it?” He didn’t experience anything. He said nothing was weird and it was probably just me being alone and home by myself, so I was probably imagining things.

I thought that was probably right, and then things started escalating. It turned into banging and whispers from different parts in the house when you’d be there alone. You would hear kind of whispers that you can’t make out any of the words to, but you just hear uttering voices. I realized that it wasn’t me, and something weird was happening.

So I approached it at home alone one day. I talked to the empty air, and I said something along the lines of, “Hey, this is a respectful conversation that I wanted to have. Please leave me alone. We can be civil” kind of a speech. I was under the impression that it was an old man who had lived there before us who had passed, so I thought that it was probably the older gentleman who might not have been so happy about me bringing the cat in the house, because I feel like it escalated at that point.

It was scaring my cat. She would be sleeping somewhere and then something would stomp on the floor next to her and scare her away. It was really centered on me and the cat. So that’s what my impression was, so I talked to it as if it was the guy who had lived in this house before me.

Time passes and I tell my dad, “Hey, I think I had a conversation with this spirit.” He was like, “That’s not true because this old man is alive, and he’s in a nursing home. He didn’t actually pass here, so you were talking to nothing.” I thought that was weird.

Then that night, I had a dream that a weird shadow person attacked me. Since then – well, after that things escalated rapidly into doors slamming and screeching sounds. At one point my dad saw a figure in the window of our home, and it wasn’t me. So he started experiencing weird things. He started also sleepwalking, which was weird, and doing odd behavior.

I did some research and I guess witchcraft work and was able to somewhat mitigate it with salt and saging repetitively for months and making moonwater, as crazy as that sounds. I read it and it worked. You wash your windows with moonwater. I made little protection bags, and I put them all over the house, and I did that for weeks on end until it stopped. I don’t know what it was, but it worked, and as soon as our one-year lease was up, we left and never went back.

Then after we moved out of that house, he’s never sleepwalked, and we’ve never had any issues again.

JIM HAROLD: I guess it means that just because you ask something to go away, it doesn’t always work that way. It doesn’t always agree.

DANI: No. And when I talked to it, I didn’t even think that was an option because I had never heard of it not working before.

JIM HAROLD: That’s interesting. I do think that makes sense from the viewpoint – like a lot of things in life, everybody’s experience with the paranormal is a little bit different. Some people have these reassuring experiences, some people have these more sinister experiences, and then some people have both. I think it’s a continuum, and sometimes maybe the energy you tap into isn’t that pleasant.

Dani, thank you so much for sharing your story tonight on the Campfire.

DANI: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Thank you so much for joining us this week on the Campfire. As we said at the beginning of the show, if you enjoy what you hear on these free shows of the Campfire, there’s something really important you can do to help us. Of course, support our sponsors, but also, please make sure that you have hit follow or subscribe in the podcast app of your choice.

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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.