A little boy ghost is very protective of his room, a strange doppelganger story, and a loved one may have sent a message from the other side through via this very podcast. This and much more on this episode of Jim Harold’s Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

JIM HAROLD: A little boy ghost who was very protective of his room – up next 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. This is the place where you hear true, real stories of ghosts and cryptid creatures, headscratchers, amazing paranormal and supernatural stories. Welcome to the program.

Speaking of which, if you have you own supernatural story you’d like to hear on the Campfire, our submissions are now open. Jimharold.com/campfire to sign up and tell yours, and I would appreciate it very, very much.

I’ll be back in a little bit because I have a special favor to ask, but I want to get right into these great Campfire stories.

Jamie is on the line from Wisconsin. We’ve heard a lot of ghost stories over the years on the Campfire; I don’t know if we’ve heard one where this happened. It’s interesting. It’s kind of fun. Jamie, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. I know you’re a new listener, so welcome to the show as a listener. Be like Jamie. When you hear these new callers coming on and saying, “I’ve been listening a month, I’ve been listening two months, and I had to tell my story” – be like them. Be like Jamie. Jamie, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

JAMIE: Thank you very much for having me. This happened in 2001. My husband, Nate, and I were visiting my brother-in-law for the first time in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is basically in Boston. It was August, so it was incredibly warm and humid. We had a great evening, and we went to bed in the spare room. His house was from the turn of the century, as in 1900, and remodeled.

The very first night, we opened up all the windows because it was so hot, and my husband woke up in the middle of the night needing to use the restroom. He looked over in the doorway and he saw the outline of a little boy. He waited until he really had to use the restroom, jumped up, got to the restroom, and he said he felt followed. He got back in bed, fell asleep.

The next morning, he told me what happened. I’ve had a lot of paranormal experiences, and I was very, very lucky to find a husband that also has had experiences. For the rest of the day, he was a cranky human being, very unlike himself.

The second night, we opened up the windows, very hot and humid, and I woke up in the middle of the night extremely, extremely hot. I looked, actually thinking that Nate got up and closed the windows. It was silent. You couldn’t hear the crickets or the city noises. Then I felt something tickling my foot.

JIM HAROLD: Ooh. [laughs] How do you even process that? I’m guessing at this point you’re not thinking ghost; you’re thinking “there’s a person in here tickling my feet,” right?

JAMIE: Right, exactly. I look down at my feet and I see the head of a little boy. He was crouching at the foot of the bed. And he did not have a sweet expression on his face. I was frozen. I was so scared. He slowly crawled up on the bed, and he started climbing up on top of me, coming towards my head. I would say he was probably about eight, nine years old. I couldn’t move. It was so terrifying. I’m lucky enough to have spirit guides in my life, and all of a sudden my spirit guide was standing next to me at the side of the bed, and she said very loudly, “Jamie, cover yourself.” At that point it was so hot, I didn’t have any covers on.

All of a sudden I could move my left arm, and I grabbed the sheet and I covered myself, and he disappeared. I guess I fell back to sleep; I’m not exactly sure. It was such a horrid moment. I know it sounds strange that you wouldn’t just be sitting there or lying there, scared to fall back to sleep, but having my spirit guide there, I just fell back to sleep.

The next morning I told my husband, and he believed me, of course. We got up and went in the kitchen. My brother-in-law was making a lovely breakfast of waffles and sausage. I stood in the kitchen and watched the spirit of this little boy run down the hall, through the kitchen, and through out to the living room and just do laps.

JIM HAROLD: Whoa. And you knew this was not a human of this time, this was a spirit of some type?

JAMIE: Right. It was this little boy. He was very – not completely solid, like he was the night before when he was crawling up me. And no one else saw him. I just stood there in the kitchen, pretty dumbstruck and also very afraid because I had that experience the night before. He was definitely letting me know that this was his place.

After breakfast I went back into our room. We had already packed up our things, and the little boy was sitting on the floor amongst our luggage, looking like he was almost rifling through our luggage. I saw him, and I saw a little boy. My heart went out to him. I said out loud, “Why are you still here? Aren’t you wanting to go find your mom and dad?” And he looked up at me and his voice was in my head, answering. He just said, “This is my room.”

I actually was like, “Nope, nope, peace out, done. You just got into my head. I just heard you.” We left. I had my husband go and get the bags. I just felt covered in an ick. I was in a terrible mood. I was a basket case. We actually went up to our family cottage and I did a smudging of cedar for three days, burning cedar and smudging it, just to get that ick off of me.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

JAMIE: That was the scariest thing.

JIM HAROLD: When I first saw this, I’m like, “Oh, it’s a fun little story about a foot-tickling ghost,” but it was a lot more than that.

JAMIE: It was not happy. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: No. Do you think that was an inhabitant of the house early on, early in its history? Was he dressed in a particular kind of garb or costume?

JAMIE: Yes, he had a white, collarless button-down shirt, real simple longish hair, and he had knee pants on that my grandfather, who was born in like 1913, always described wearing. So it was definitely an older spirit who possibly, I got the feeling, died, probably of a disease.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that was very, very common back then. People died very, very young sometimes through horrible diseases. Well, Jamie, you’ve given us one to really chew on here. I know you say that you and your husband have experiences, so you’re more than welcome to come back – either or both of you – to share some more of those experiences. That was a great story.

JAMIE: Thank you. Yes, that was the scariest one that has happened to me. Thank you very much.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks for being a part of the Campfire, and stay spooky.

Hey, Jim back here. I said I’d be back to ask a big favor, and I want you to help me out with my tour. Our ticket sales so far, I have to be honest, have been disappointing. We’re coming to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston at the end of June. But if ticket sales don’t increase, we’re going to have to reverse course and refund folks who have purchased tickets – and thank you if you have. And we don’t want that to happen. We want to have this tour go off. We can only do it, though, if we can do it with a modest profit, and we’re not there yet.

So we need your help. We need you to go to jimharold.com/tour to buy your tickets today. Small company, one full-time employee, so we unfortunately have to make sure that this is a profitable venture to make it happen, because if we lose money on a tour, then that impedes our ability to do shows like the Campfire, and podcasts themselves are always our number one priority. So I hope that you’ll support the tour – and do it today. If you want to come to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston to our shows in June, please get those tickets today because we’re going to have to make a go/no-go decision real soon here. I appreciate everything you all do for me. You guys are great.

We’re a little surprised because the feedback was so great when we said we were going on tour – and I wish I could come to everybody’s city, but we can’t, so thought these would be really good cities to start off with and see where things go. So far, again, the ticket sales are not, in any of those venues, where they need to be. So please help us out: jimharold.com/tour, and get those tickets today we so can make a “go” decision. And rest assured if you have purchased and we do end up canceling any shows, you would be refunded. Thank you again for your support for those who have purchased tickets.

Now I want to talk to you briefly about something that’s totally separate, has nothing to do with my tour. Actually, they’ve done great with ticket sales, and I’m going to be a small part of it: Small Town Monsters is doing their Monster Fest on June 2nd and 3rd, and you can get your tickets over at smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest. That’s smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest. That’s in Canton, Ohio. There’ll be a lot of great people there. Particularly, the Astoinshing Legends guys are going to be there, and on the 3rd it looks like we are going to be doing a meet & greet after the show that evening. So please get your tickets. Smalltownmonsters.com/stmmonsterfest. Seth is a fantastic guy and has done such a great job, so we want you to support them if you are in the area.

I look forward to seeing you there, and hopefully look forward to seeing you on my tour, too, if everything works out. Now let’s get back to some more great Campfire stories.

Karina is on the line from San Diego, California. What a beautiful city that is! I am envious, Karina. She’s been listening to us since the pandemic. We’re glad that she found us, despite the circumstances. She’s going to take us back for a very spooky and scary story back when she was eight years old. Karina, welcome to the show and please tell us what happened.

KARINA: Thank you. The story takes place back in the late ’80s. I was about eight years old. My family is originally from Central Mexico, and we were visiting on this extended trip. We were staying with my grandmother. Just to give you a layout of the house, she had one of these pretty typical Mexican homes where you have this big center patio, and then all of the sections of the house are connected to this patio. The bathroom was actually located in the patio.

One night, I wake up in the middle of the night and I have to use the bathroom. I was sharing a room with my mom, and I had to wake her up to help me get to the bathroom because my grandmother had the habit of locking up all the doors at night. So if you had to use the restroom, you would have to go find the keys, open up all the doors. It was this big to-do, so my mom had to help me. We get to the bathroom and we realize there’s hardy any toilet paper left, so I go on in and she went back to the bedroom to try to find a roll.

So I’m sitting there. The door was open, and a few feet in front of me was this big cement sink that my grandmother would use. It was basically up against the wall. Basically from where I’m sitting, I’m looking at one of the sides of the cement sink. I’m staring out in front of me, waiting for my mom to come back, and all of a sudden I see what appears to be an older woman peeking out at me from the other side of the sink. It looked as though she was either on her hands and knees or crouched down and hiding behind the sink.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

KARINA: All I could see is basically her head looking out at me. I’m staring at her. It looks like she’s staring right back at me for what seems like minutes but really was probably only seconds. And then it looked as though she started to crawl towards me. I was thinking back on my story and I started to remember little details, like how she was looking at me. She had this bewildered look on her face, almost as if she realized I could see her and she could see me, is what I would detail it as.

She starts moving towards me, looks like she’s crawling out of her hiding spot, and at that moment I unfroze and I started to call out for my mom. She comes back out from the hallway and into the patio, and as soon as my mom does that, it’s as if this woman basically went back into her hiding spot, but like lightning-fast, as if somebody yanked her back to wherever she was hiding. My mom walks up to me and I tell her immediately what I just saw, and she’s listening to me and she has this weird look on her face. But she believes me. She walks me over to the sink, I show her exactly where I saw the woman, and I see her looking around. She doesn’t really say much, and we just go back to bed.

The next day, everybody’s up, my grandmother’s up, there’s some family over, and I’m telling my story to everybody. Everybody’s pretty creeped out. My grandmother’s house had the reputation of being haunted, but I don’t think anybody really took it seriously. My grandmother said, “Back before I bought this house, it used to be a larger property, and I know that a woman died on that property.” I don’t remember the name she gave me, but she said, “It was so-and-so, and she died here. Maybe that was the person you saw that night.” So that was my story. That was my first encounter with a ghost, and I’ve been a believer ever since.

JIM HAROLD: I’ve got to say this. It’s amazing to me – the one thing that really hit me – I mean, it’s a scary story, no question, but you said that the “ghost” looked as bewildered by you as you were by it, right?

KARINA: Exactly, yeah.

JIM HAROLD: That’s the thing that’s really interesting to me. Sometimes I wonder if to them, we are the ghosts, you know?

KARINA: Yeah. For many years I really thought this was just a ghost story, but after listening to your podcast and listening about time slips and things like that, I start to wonder, even if I thought I saw her, was it something a lot weirder?

JIM HAROLD: I don’t have the answers, but I do believe that the world is a far stranger place than we give it credit for. And thank you for joining us, Karina, in that journey and sharing your very interesting Campfire story.

KARINA: Thanks so much.

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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: Taylor is on the line from East Tennessee. Something that I’ve noticed – people will listen to one of my shows and not know that I have other shows, and that was Taylor. She was listening to the Paranormal Podcast back in 2015 when she was doing overnights at the place she worked, and she said it was kind of spooky. But she got away from podcasts for a while. Somebody told her about the Campfire in the last couple of years, and now she’s been listening religiously since. So that’s just to say, I have a bunch of other podcasts. The Paranormal Podcast, Jim Harold’s Crime Scene, a whole host of podcasts. So make sure that you check those out, if you don’t mind, if you like this show. And the reason you like this show is because people like Taylor bring spooky stories to the Campfire. She has a few dreams she’d like to share from over the years. Taylor, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us some of these strange dreams you’ve had.

TAYLOR: A lot of the strange dreams started happening when I was a teenager. My parents went through a divorce, and the home life was not good. My mom was going through cancer. She’s fine now, but it was pretty tough at the time. Our house at the time was kind of like Grand Central Station with ghosts. It was pretty annoying.

But one of the first things that happened during that time was I had a dream about this woman. I was in this old house with a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and this woman was wearing Victorian garb, and she was like, “You need to start making life a little bit easier on your mom. You need to start dressing a little bit better, start putting in effort with things, and try to make everybody’s life easier.” I’m like, “Look, I don’t know who you are.” She’s like, “I’m Florence.” I’m like, “The only Florence I know of is Miss Brady from The Brady Bunch, Florence Henderson.”

I told my grandmother about the dream the next morning and she was like, “Yeah, come over later,” and she showed me this picture. It was of my third great-grandmother that died in 1897 from typhoid fever. She likes to nag. I’ve only seen her maybe two or three times since then, and I know if I do see her, I’d better get my crap together.

JIM HAROLD: So she’s watching over you and bringing you back in line when need be.

TAYLOR: Oh yeah. She was 27 when she died from typhoid fever, and my great-great-grandfather was only two when she passed, but she definitely is still a force. The vibe that I got from her, she reminds me a lot of my great-aunt. And that woman was absolutely a force. You can’t really stop them even in death.

JIM HAROLD: It’s wild to think – and obviously if you have this, I think all of us would have this – you have this long line of ancestors who are behind you, watching what you’re doing. That’s really interesting. Maybe sometimes when we hear that little voice in our mind, maybe that’s the little voice, one of these ancestors saying, “Hey, do this, do that. Don’t do that, don’t do this.” Could be.

TAYLOR: It very well could. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched to me at all, either. You hear so many stories. It doesn’t seem that out of the blue or that far left.

JIM HAROLD: That was only one dream; you have more, right?

TAYLOR: Yeah. This was shortly after that. This was my sophomore year of high school as well. This one had me a little bit messed up for a little bit. This was November of 2007. I think it was November 30th. I went to sleep and had a dream. The timing doesn’t really add up to when this actually happened, just because the time zones, but whatever it was, I was still seeing it.

I had a dream that I was on a mountain and it was nighttime and there was a plane that went down right before my eyes, and there was somebody standing to my back. I said, “Oh my God, it’s going to be another 9/11.” And I had paranoid dreams about 9/11 all the time anyways because I lived in a town called Oak Ridge, and they were involved in the Manhattan Project. Everybody here, we have a system that goes off monthly to let you know if you need to say your graces and get straight with God in two minutes because if that thing goes off, you’re dead. So a lot of people here have paranoid dreams like “Oh my God, we’re gonna die.” They really don’t do anything that serious anymore, but anyway.

I had the dream about the plane going down and I said, “Oh my God, it’s going to be another 9/11.” I woke up that morning and it was all over the news that a plane in Turkey had gone down and it was the exact same – what they were showing was what I was seeing. It was on a mountain. I still remember it was Atlasjet Flight 4203. And for a while I could not drive by airports without freaking out. Planes, if they were low, I would freak out and have full-blown panic attacks.

JIM HAROLD: It’s interesting because I think we had somebody else who called in who had a dream about an airplane crash in Turkey. Again, this is off the top of my head. My recollection is in the last year or two.

TAYLOR: That’s crazy.

JIM HAROLD: I’m pretty sure that we did.

TAYLOR: That’s something that doesn’t seem that far-fetched to me either, because I was telling my grandmother before I got on the phone call and we were talking about the accident that happened in Wales back in the ’60s, where all that stuff fell down on the town, and so many people had the dream of it happening where a bunch of kids got killed at the elementary school. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

JIM HAROLD: People are tapping into the same thing. It’s like Jung’s collective unconscious, if you want to get metaphysical a little bit. The thing is, I’m not 100% on that, but somewhere in the recesses of my little pea brain [laughs], I seem to remember that somebody called in having had a dream about –

TAYLOR: That’s interesting. I’m going to have to go back.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I’m going to have to research myself. Folks, if you’re listening and you remember that and I’m not just making that up in my mind, let me know, because it seems like there was at some point.

TAYLOR: That’s interesting.

JIM HAROLD: You have more. I think we have time for one more.

TAYLOR: I’ll do the most recent one. I had some that happened prior to 2012 and then it tapered off, I think because I got my life together. I wasn’t really having anything happen. And then just recently I feel like I’m lost and it started happening again. I’ve been having this dream consistently for about three weeks of being on this dirt road. It’s dark, don’t know where I’m at, but I keep going on this dirt road.

I started to fall asleep the other day and there was this guy pointing towards the mountain, towards this hill. I was like, “Nope,” because I knew exactly who it was when I saw it. After the whole Florence thing, my grandmother got me into genealogy, and I knew exactly who it was. It was my grandfather’s great-uncle who died when he was 21 after he was caught smooching with a guy’s wife in their bed. So the guy shot him and buried him somewhere. They never gave the body back to the family. The area is pretty close to here, but it is notorious for meth and also there’s a lot of spooky stuff that happens near that area, and a lot of people do not go to it because of it. It’s near Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. A lot of people just avoid that area in general.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. It just seems like some people are tuned in, and I think there’s something about dreams. I think there’s a duality with dreams. On one side – and this is the example I always use – you go grocery shopping, you’ll be in the produce aisle, and then you’ll have a dream of flying on a banana. That’s like the junk drawer part of it. But I think there’s also this part where there’s a thinning of the veil, and you can communicate to people on the other side more easily.

TAYLOR: Absolutely.

JIM HAROLD: Indeed, indeed. Well, Taylor, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you being a part of the show. Glad you found us again. Glad you found the Campfire, and stay spooky.

TAYLOR: Absolutely. Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Amy is on the line from North Carolina. You know, a lot of times on the show we have a lot of spooky, scary stories, but sometimes we have some heartwarming and affirming stories. And that’s what we have today. Amy is here from North Carolina, as I said, and so glad to have her with us. Amy, please tell us your story.

AMY: Thanks for having me, Jim. I’ll tell just a couple minutes of the backstory first. My grandmother passed away about 10 years ago, and we were best friends.

JIM HAROLD: Aww, I’m sorry.

AMY: I have an autistic son that from the very beginning, he spoke like he was still talking to her, communicating with her. Even at her funeral, he looked up in the corner and said, “Oh no, that man took Grandma.”

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

AMY: Yeah, so it started there. “She’s sitting on your bed” or things like that. As I’m coming here today and I’m thinking about telling you my story, I have a little lockbox beside my bed, and it has her rings in it that she gave me. He doesn’t know what’s in there; it’s locked. He brought me that box this morning and said, “She wants you to wear this.”

JIM HAROLD: Wow. And if you can’t see the video, Amy has one of her grandma’s rings on. That is so awesome.

AMY: Yeah, so that’s just a little background of the story. So I was having a tough time a few weeks ago, and on my way to work, I thought, “I’m just going to talk to her.” I’m talking to her, telling her about everything that’s going on, and all of a sudden I see this really big – it’s so beautiful, it’s like this big pink cross in the sky. It was huge, and it was so pretty. I tried to take a picture of it, Jim, and my camera would not pick it up. I tried to video it and it just would not show up on this video. So I’m thinking, “Okay, Grandma, if that was you, let me know. Prove it to me that that was you. Let me hear or see your name in the next 24 to 48 hours.”

I said that out loud, and I forgot all about it. I went on to work. I’m a teacher, so I got super busy. I went to work, forgot all about it, and I get into my car on the way home from work and your show came on because my phone automatically connects to Spotify in the truck. You came on the radio, Jim, and you said, “And our next story comes from Mary.” At first I’m like, okay. I wouldn’t have even thought twice about it, but the next line you said was, “And Mary writes…” and you took a deep pause. And that was her name. Her name was Mary Wright.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

AMY: I’m like, you just said my grandma’s name, Jim. It brings tears to my eyes. I was like “I have to tell Jim this story,” because it was so sweet, and you were in it. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: It’s funny – I mean, you asked for a sign, and when you wrote me, you said you asked for that sign and that pink cross came, and then really the double sign. I’ve got to say – and I don’t want to make this about me, but lately I’ve been a little down. There are so many new podcasts out there, and there’s so many people doing exciting things, and I’m like, maybe I’m becoming kind of passé. Maybe people are getting bored with the show, or whatever the case would be. I think this was a sign to me to stick with it because it does have meaning to people. That is so beautiful. That is so neat.

AMY: It does.

JIM HAROLD: This has happened – and I’m not going to tell the story again, but it’s happened with my uncle in particular, who I was very close to. It’s like a chessboard, and they put pieces in place and manipulate things so you will see a sign that will let you know that they’re still around and still watching out for you. I had that experience. And I mean, what are the chances? “And Mary writes…”

AMY: Right. I’m like, oh my gosh.

JIM HAROLD: I think, if I’m remembering, that might’ve been – was that in March sometime? Is that right?

AMY: Yes. It sure was.

JIM HAROLD: I think that was one of the shoutouts. We do shoutouts on the show. I said something like, “And Mary writes…” And what happened was, somehow, when I said that, your grandma said, “Okay, Jim, this is the way you’re going to say this.” I believe that. I totally believe that.

AMY: I do too. It spoke to me. That very day, I had to get on there and figure out how to tell you this story because I’m like, “Jim would like to hear this.”

JIM HAROLD: I would like to hear it. It means a lot. And it’s nothing about me, but it’s about them and what they can do and what your grandma was able to do. That also resonates with me because my brother – I think there’s different terminology today; I apologize, but this goes back to when I was a little kid. I don’t think this is the proper terminology these days, but my brother was autistic, and that resonated with me very much as well.

AMY: My son has always spoken of her and other loved ones, so I’ll have more stories for you. She’s always speaking to him, and I’ve never gotten my own sign from her, so that was pretty special.

JIM HAROLD: It’s very special. And again, it’s fun to hear those spooky and scary stories, but these are the ones that resonate with me, the ones where we know our loved ones who love us very much, and we love them, are still in touch, and they’re still watching out for us.

AMY: They are. They really are. Please stick with it, Jim, because there are people that are still listening. There’s lots of people still listening.

JIM HAROLD: Well, thank you. You made my day. Amy, thank you for being a part of the Campfire.

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

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Subscribe or follow Jim Harold’s Campfire today wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review, too. It helps so much. Thanks! Now, back to another great Campfire story.

JIM HAROLD: Izzie is on the line from Utah. She said this is the first time she’s ever called in to any show. We appreciate it very much. She has – I guess I would call this a headscratcher, and she’s going to tell us all about it. Izzie, welcome to the show. Please tell us what happened.

IZZIE: Thank you so much, Jim. I’m so excited to be on your show. I’ve been listening for about a year, so I decided I wanted to share my story.

JIM HAROLD: Great. Thank you. Welcome to the program, and we appreciate it.

IZZIE: Thank you. This happened around 2005. Just to give a background so it makes sense, I come from a tribe in Kenya, and we are nomads. Just because of the changing times, people have stopped moving around a lot with their cattle, so people have stayed in place and they have their animals, but they still farm on the side. But because of this, it means that there’s less land that is available.

So a lot of the young people, a lot of the young men in their twenties, came together, and amongst these people were my cousins. They decided they were going to go to the village elders and tell them to give them permission to go take over a nearby forest. The reason why they needed permission is because it’s a sacred forest. They’re like, “Can you just allow us to farm? We can go in, cut down the trees, and make homes for ourselves.” The elders were like, “No, you know the rules. No one goes in there, only the shaman,” like the medicine men. They’re the only people that are able to go in there.

The young men are like, “We don’t really believe a lot of these traditions anymore. That’s old school. We don’t care. We are going to move there anyway.” So that’s what they do. My cousins and a bunch of these guys move into this forest. Then within a month, they all moved out. One by one, they all moved out. Stories were going around with people wondering, “What’s going on?” My mom invites our cousins over to her house for lunch. When they come over, my mom says, “I’ve been hearing stories from people, but I don’t want third- and fourth-hand accounts. I want a firsthand account of what happened.”

JIM HAROLD: Right, you don’t want somebody else’s word for it. What’s going on with you guys moving back? What is the reason? They want the truth from the people that experienced whatever happened.

IZZIE: Yeah. My cousins are like, “Well, Auntie, crazy things happened.” One cousin says, “It was early in the morning. I was having my tea and I was seated outside the house, and the cattle had already been taken” – when the cows go grazing, you take them really far away, and then in the evening, that’s when the cows will come home and you can hear cowbells. But my cousin says while he’s sitting there, he starts to hear cowbells. He’s like, “Why am I hearing cowbells? That doesn’t make sense. The cows are not supposed to be here.” You would hear the cowbells in the evening.

Then, out of nowhere, and he says right behind his chair, he hears a woman yelling. She’s yelling at kids. He said you could tell she was scolding children just from the way she was talking, and she was speaking the tribal language and was telling the children that they need to move the cows away. She’s like, “Why are the cows here? You need to get them instead of playing around,” just scolding the children. He was like, “There was no one there.” There were no cows, there were no children, and no woman. So he said he got scared and ran to one of my other cousin’s houses because he was scared to be alone there.

Then another cousin says – and he said it happened more than once – he’d be sitting in his house and out of nowhere he’d hear conversations going on. It’d be a bunch of people talking. He said it would be normal, everyday conversations. It wouldn’t be anything strange. He said he used to get so scared, he’d leave the house at night because he didn’t want to stay there.

Then another cousin said he was with a friend of his and they were just going to visit someone else, so they were along the path, walking in that forest still, and out of nowhere these two men came up. He said they were dressed regular; there was nothing weird or odd about them. Just two men walking, having a conversation. But it seemed like they came from nowhere, like they just appeared. They stopped and talked to my cousins, asked them how they were doing, and then they were like, “We need to get going.” They said they went a few feet away from them and disappeared.

JIM HAROLD: Like into thin air, basically.

IZZIE: Into thin air. So everyone just kept having very strange experiences that they couldn’t take it anymore, so one by one, they all moved out. They said, “We can’t explain what’s there. We don’t know what’s happening.”

Later, my cousins leave after they have visited with us that afternoon, and I couldn’t wait for them to leave because I wanted to talk to my mom about it. As soon as they leave, I tell my mom, “Did you really believe them? That’s a ridiculous story. That cannot be true. Really? These ghosts in that forest? It was all in their head.” And my mom doesn’t join me in laughing. She seemed to be taking it seriously. She’s like, “There’s a reason I wanted to talk to them.” I was like, “Why?” She said, “Because finally I feel like I’m not crazy.” I was like, “What do you mean?”

She’s like, “I’ve never told this story to anyone. When I was a little girl, around seven or eight, my family lived at the edge of that forest.” She said one day she heard a noise – it sounded like the warriors from our tribe. When the warriors are marching, going to fight or whatever it is they’re going to do, they beat their spears and their shield together while marching. My mom said she heard that sound and immediately knew, “Oh, that’s warriors beating their shield. There must be warriors. Let me go see them as they march.” So she takes off running, and she said she goes out where she could hear them, outside the fence. She runs and she looks on both sides and there’s nothing. She’s like, “That’s weird. Where are they?”

She says she keeps hearing the sound coming closer and closer, and they’re marching and chanting, the way soldiers would. She said it came closer to her until it sounded like they were right in front of her, but she said, “There was nothing. There was nothing in front of me.” She said they kept marching until they disappeared, but she didn’t see anything. She just heard them. She said she thought she was crazy, and she could never figure it out, and she didn’t ever want to talk about it to anyone because she was like, “What am I going to say?” [laughs]

So she said she held on to it all this time, since the time she was a little kid, until she heard this story about my cousins and was like, “I need to hear it from them. I need to know I wasn’t crazy.” So that was the crazy story that happened to my mom and my cousins.

JIM HAROLD: I think the world is a far stranger place than we give it credit for, and I think sometimes we doubt ourselves about it when honestly, there’s no reason to doubt ourselves. Strange things happen that don’t make “sense” by our normal senses, but still they happen. What that is, what causes that, I do not know. But absolutely fascinating. And we appreciate you so much, Izzie, for sharing that story. No other update to it? No other explanation? Just all these people experiencing strange things in that area, right?

IZZIE: Yeah, because no one ever wanted to go back there again, especially after my cousins and all the young men shared that story. People don’t go there. People have left it to the medicine men who always go there. But funny enough, I had a friend of mine – during a party, I was sharing this story, and then they gave an interesting explanation. They said, “What if that forest is part of the ley lines that people always talk about?” Like Stonehenge and places like that. He’s like, “What if the energy there lets people experience a parallel universe?” Because they spoke the same language and looked like regular people. He said, “What if those people experience the same thing?” Like that woman turned around and saw a man seated, saw my cousin, of course, and then she had that story and was like, “Something strange happened to me today. I saw this man and he disappeared.”

JIM HAROLD: That’s right. That reminds me of when people say they see a “ghost” and then the ghost seems to be as startled as they are. [laughs]

IZZIE: [laughs] Yes.

JIM HAROLD: A weird world we live in, Izzie, a weird world. Thank you for sharing a little bit about your experience and your family’s experience of it and some strangeness that ensued. Thank you again, Izzie.

IZZIE: Thank you so much, Jim. I’ve enjoyed being on your podcast.

JIM HAROLD: Drew is on the line from West Virginia, my adopted home state – actually, my parents’ home state, but I went there every summer for about 22 years, so I think I kind of get honorary membership, hopefully, or citizenship, whatever that might be – if Drew agrees to it, of course.

DREW: Oh, I think so.

JIM HAROLD: Well, thank you, Drew, thank you. What an honor. Thank you. Wild, wonderful West Virginia. Anyhow, I’m not going to ruin the story; suffice it to say this is indeed a headscratcher. Drew, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, I appreciate it, and tell us what happened.

DREW: This actually happened where I grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas. It happened in the summer of 2003. I was 17 at the time. Me and a couple of friends were cruising around town in my little pickup truck. It only has one seat, so we’re shoulder to shoulder, jammed in this pickup truck. At the end of Main Street in Hutchinson there’s a park called Carey Park. It’s a rather big park. It’s pretty popular with people. It’s not anything to see people leaving after it gets dark. But we’re just using it as a turnaround spot.

We’re going through the park, looking for a good place to turn around, and we’re going through the backside of the park and we notice another car heading towards us. It’s not really that unusual; there’s just these two headlights coming at us. But when the lights get to us, there’s no car. The lights just disappear.

Now, what makes it more interesting is my friend Jenny that was with us saw something a little bit different. She only saw one light, so she thought it was a motorcycle. And as that light’s getting closer to us, she thinks it’s going to run right into us because the light’s coming straight for us. She thinks we’re going to have a head-on collision with a motorcycle. And then the light that she saw passed directly through the truck and then disappeared.

All three of us at the time were talking amongst each other, as teenagers do, and then from that moment, once those light disappeared, we were silent all the way until we got back to one of my friend’s houses. We didn’t talk about anything else. We just said goodnight, called it quits, and I went home from there. Every once in a while I’ll mention to Jenny, “Hey, you remember that?” She’s like, “Yeah, it still creeps me out to this day.”

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s pretty wild. I think we heard a story like that years ago on the show. It might’ve been like one light went one way and the other one went the other way, like it split and flew off. I can’t remember if it was the person who called in or if it was their parents’ story or what it was, but I definitely remember very distinctly that there was a story like this. So what do you think it was?

DREW: I have no idea. I know I’ve heard of haunting cases where it could’ve been the person in the future, like they went down this path and that’s what they’re seeing. I don’t know if that’s what it was. But it freaked me out. When I go and visit my parents, I still won’t go through that park at night. Whenever I do go through that park, when I go down that little stretch of road, I always remember “this is where it happened.” I just don’t want to be in that park after dark anymore.

JIM HAROLD: I don’t blame you. [laughs] We have all these brave people who call into the show, yet I’m a chicken. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve seen enough.” The thing is, I don’t think I would object to seeing a UFO or having something strange happen to me; I think I’d be receptive to that. But I’d be receptive to seeing it once. It’s not like I would go back for seconds. [laughs]

DREW: Yeah.

JIM HAROLD: Well, Drew, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing this story. If anybody else has had an experience with weird lights like this, please do call in and let us know. Or any experience, for that matter. Drew, thanks again for being a part of the Campfire.

DREW: Of course.

JIM HAROLD: You know, in life you have things that just make you go, “Hmm, what was that all about?” And today, Susan is going to tell us about one of those things. She’s calling in today from New Jersey, and we appreciate it. She found us during spooky season this past Halloween, so we’re so glad to have her on the show. Susan, tell us about this headscratcher.

SUSAN: Okay, Jim. This happened in 2002. I was with some friends. We were up in Boston, and we decided to go for a walk/run around a reservoir. My friends were all walking. I was running because I was in training for the New York City Marathon.

JIM HAROLD: Oh wow.

SUSAN: That was a long time ago. That was a one-and-done. That’s never happening again.

JIM HAROLD: Hey, believe me, I’ve never run a marathon, so anybody who has ever done it has my admiration.

SUSAN: Thank you. Anyway, I’m running and I see an African-American gentleman dressed in a suit, wearing a fez. I smiled at him as I was running past, and he smiled back and he said, “Hi, Sue.” It didn’t hit me at first, but as I was running I’m like, “Wait a second. How did he know my name?” I’m looking down to see if maybe I have something on my t-shirt or something that has my name on it. No. Then I think, okay, the only explanation for this is that he must’ve passed my friends who were walking, and they told him, “Our friend is running around. Her name is Sue.”

I did another lap, and when I passed him again he was sitting on a bench, so I stopped and I asked him, “How did you know my name?” He said, “God put it in my head.” I stopped to talk to him, and it turned out he was from Ethiopia. He was on his way to church. His name was Matthias, which interesting enough, this being Holy Week, Matthias was the thirteenth apostle. He was the one who replaced Judas.

That was it. It was a very short encounter. He went on to church. I was just blown away, and when I told my friends, I said, “A miracle happened to me.” And I still feel like it was a miracle, like, how did this man know my name?

JIM HAROLD: And was this pre-internet days? Was this before the internet or anything?

SUSAN: No, it was 2002, so I think there was internet, right?

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, we had the internet, but there wasn’t social. It’s not like – now, I hate to say this, but you can stalk people and find out stuff about them that you couldn’t back in 2002.

SUSAN: Yeah, pre social media.

JIM HAROLD: Facebook and all of that stuff. I think Facebook was 2005.

SUSAN: Yeah, I didn’t get on Facebook till 2009, so I did not have an online presence. There was really no way that this guy would’ve known my name.

JIM HAROLD: That’s pretty wild. [laughs]

SUSAN: So that was it.

JIM HAROLD: Pretty simple: you think it was a miracle from God.

SUSAN: I think so. A very small miracle, but a miracle nonetheless. Made me happy. Stayed with me to this day.

JIM HAROLD: You know, I think I agree with you. Thanks so much for being on the Campfire and sharing your headscratcher.

SUSAN: Thank you, Jim, and stay spooky.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Hailey is on the line from Massachusetts. Like so many people, she found out about the show from Christine and Em over at And That’s Why We Drink, so we appreciate it very, very much. Hailey is calling in today from Massachusetts and would like to share some experiences that happened to her after her father died. Hailey, welcome to the show and thank you for sharing this very personal story. Please tell us what happened.

HAILEY: Thank you so much. This happened in 2004. I was 14 when my dad passed very unexpectedly. It was a work-related accident. When we got back from the hospital, my mom and my two younger brothers – we wanted to go for a walk. It was hard to be in the house at the time. During this time, we were walking – it’s a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska. We happened to turn around from our walk, and it was a completely clear sky, which is important. We turn around and there is a cloud, or like fog, rolling across our property. We have about three acres of land. It stopped right where our house was. Then as we’re watching this cloud, it goes up into the sky and dissipates.

There was such a moment of peace where there was a sense that everything was going to be okay. And my dad loved his property. I truly believe it was his chance of saying goodbye to the property and saying goodbye to the house that he really loved so much.

JIM HAROLD: In a sense, do you feel like you were seeing him go to heaven?

HAILEY: I do. I believe that he was going somewhere, whether it’s heaven or the afterlife. I definitely think there’s something out there. But I 100% believe that I watched his spirit say goodbye to this world and move on to the next.

JIM HAROLD: Was he a believer in the afterlife, would you say?

HAILEY: I would say so. I get the sense that he was at peace. That’s what I was feeling at the time. He was dealing with some health stuff as well; he had some long-lasting effects of West Nile virus, and he was in a lot of pain. I got that sense that he was feeling happy and healthy again.

JIM HAROLD: And I’m assuming all of this brings you comfort, right?

HAILEY: It absolutely does. And there’s additional story to this a couple days later.

JIM HAROLD: Go ahead.

HAILEY: This would’ve been four or five days later, on the day of his funeral. I’m lying in bed and I wake up and I feel someone tickling my feet and moving up my legs and up my body. I said, “Dad, stop!” because this was exactly how he would wake me up every morning for school. I was really struggling at the time, too, because my last conversation with my dad was not very pleasant. I was being a moody teenager and said some things that were not that kind and really hurtful. During that time, I also felt that he forgave me for that conversation, that he was okay, and that just in general, everything was going to be okay.

JIM HAROLD: The tickling thing is very unique. That’s not something that is necessarily something that everybody would do. And I always believe this, that our loved ones find ways that are specifically meaningful to us alone. Other people, it wouldn’t make any sense, but for you specifically, since you had that experience growing up, it just said “that is absolutely him.”

HAILEY: Yeah. It was one of those things, I just knew it was him. I know he’s in a better place, and I know that he forgave me for that last conversation. It was nice for me to have that moment to say goodbye to him in our own special way.

JIM HAROLD: And I think you have to give yourself some grace there because when you think about teenagers, I know I said things that I regretted when I was a teenager, and if you go on to have kids, sometimes your kids can say hurtful things. And parents say hurtful things to kids. I mean, when you love someone, that doesn’t mean that you’re always nice. Sometimes you say things you really don’t mean. That’s just part of the human condition. None of us are perfect, and we all say things and afterwards we’re like, “Man, I wish I hadn’t said that.” But everybody does it. I bet you there’s not a person listening to this who’s not had that experience. So I hope that through those experiences, and also just knowing that, you’ve given yourself some grace in that regard.

HAILEY: Yes, absolutely.

JIM HAROLD: And I would say that to people out there – and again, I’m not a therapist and I don’t play one on podcasts, but I would say that if you said something to someone you love and you regret it, I understand that and I’ve done the same thing. But also, particularly if they’re passed and you can’t say that you’re sorry, and maybe it was a last conversation like Hailey, I would say give yourself some grace. Because every human who is listening to this – and maybe you’re struggling with it right now out there – has made that same mistake. It’s just part of being human. None of us are perfect. Hailey, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for being a part of the show. I’ve got to believe that that also helped you heal from saying something that you kind of regretted.

HAILEY: Yes, absolutely.

JIM HAROLD: Hailey, thank you again for being a part of the Campfire.

HAILEY: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the show is our friend Sandy from Alabama. She’s been listening for a little while now thanks to her friend Ashley, who is an avid listener and told her about the show. So folks, let that be an example. Do what Ashley did. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell everybody who loves spooky stuff, online and off, about the show, and then you’ll get to hear great stories like this one. Sandy, as I understand it, this particular story goes back to 2008. And I don’t want to spoil it, so tell us what happened.

SANDY: Back in 2008 – my husband and I have three sons, and at this point in time, they were 15, 9, and 3. Christian, Tommy, and Jojo are their names in that order. It was the fall of 2008, and I’m coming home. We’ve lived at this house for several years. The house is up on a little hill. When you come up the driveway, the headlights to your car at night will hit the three fake dormers across. It’s a one-story house. So I’m coming home like I have a hundred times, and the lights from my car hit the dormer, and all of a sudden I notice in the first dormer that there looks like a black cardboard cutout of my oldest son, Christian, standing in that window.

It startled me and surprised me because, one, I’ve never seen it, and two, what is it? But I think your brain just tries to make excuses of what it could be, so I’m like, “Eh, it’s just the light reflecting.” I go on a few weeks, I keep seeing this thing, but I don’t tell anybody. I don’t tell anybody about it at all.

One evening, my husband and three sons were coming home. We’re all in the car and we’re pulling into the driveway, and my middle son, Tommy, leans up between the seats and goes, “Mom, what’s that thing up there in the window that looks like Christian?” I thought, “Oh my gosh, he’s seeing it too.” Not wanting to scare him or startle him – in my mind I’m screaming “What the heck?”, but I was very calm and I said, “It’s just the light reflecting off the window. That’s nothing.”

I get my kids in the house and I pull my husband outside and I’m like, “Did you just hear what he said?” He goes, “Yeah, what about it?” I told him what I had been seeing. We discuss what it could be, what’s going on, don’t know. Anyway, later that night, everybody’s in bed except for me and Tommy. The house is totally dark except for one light over the kitchen, which is flooding a little bit into the den, where we are. On the far wall is the TV, and about four or five feet over is the hallway where my sons’ bedrooms are.

We’re sitting there with just a little bit of light, watching TV, and all of a sudden down the hallway, in my peripheral vision, I saw a head poke out perpendicular to my son’s doorway and then pop right back in. I’m sitting there trying to process, what was that? Then all of a sudden, Tommy nonchalantly says, “Mom, did Christian just walk across the room?” I’m like, “No, he didn’t walk across the room,” but in my mind I’m screaming, “What is going on?”

We go on to bed a little later. I doubt I got a lot of sleep that night. But anyway, the next day, I have my husband crawl on top of the house, open that dormer window to check in it, just to make sure there’s nothing up there that could be reflecting any type of light, nothing. He’s like, “There’s nothing there.”

A few weeks later, coming home again, pull in the driveway, and all of a sudden, not only is that same silhouette still there, but it’s wearing a bright red – you could say shirt, but I knew it was a sweater because I had bought my oldest son a bright red Christmas sweater several years back that he refused to wear but I loved, so it was still hanging in his closet. And I knew what that was, and I thought, “What in the world?” But again, I didn’t say anything to anybody about it.

A week or two later, me and Tommy are coming home. I thought, “I’m going to see if he’s seeing what I’m seeing in that window.” We pull up into the driveway and I said, “Tommy, you know that thing you said you saw in the window that looks like Christian?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I said, “Is it wearing a colored shirt?” He said, “Yeah, it’s red.” And at that point in time I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I just freaked out, because I am like, “We are seeing the same thing, and that thing just changed colors.”

I go in, I get my husband, I tell my oldest son what I’ve been seeing. We go out, we’re driving up and down the driveway about 10 times, trying to see if anybody else could see it. Our neighbors probably thought we were nuts. I had the camera, taking pictures of it, trying to see if anything would show up in the window. But nothing. Nothing. My middle son and I are the only ones that ever saw it.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. How long did this go on?

SANDY: I knew you were going to ask me that, and I was trying to remember if I continued to see it after that. I know I saw it in the house one time after that, but we moved from that house about a year and a half later, because I remember thinking, “I hope it doesn’t follow us to the new house.” But I cannot remember if I continued to see it or not. But I can’t explain it.

JIM HAROLD: Let me ask you this. Did you know anything about the history of the house that would’ve lent itself to any kind of paranormal activity?

SANDY: We thought about that. We looked, just to try to see – the house wasn’t that old. It wasn’t an old house. We couldn’t find any connection. But I always thought it was weird that whatever it was presented itself as my oldest son.

JIM HAROLD: We’ve had those kind of stories a lot more. It’s been a long time since we started the show. Probably by the time this airs, we’ll have reached our 14th anniversary. But I never knew before I started this show that this was such a thing, particularly with young people. One of the early examples we had was basically these folks lived in a trailer, and the school bus would always drop the teenage daughter off in front of the house, I guess. Anyway, one day it’s time for the daughter to come home; her mom is there, and the daughter walks in, starts cursing at her mom, cursing up a blue streak, this, that, and the other thing, goes down the hallway, slams her door. The mom’s like, “What in the world was that all about?”

And then within seconds, the girl walks in the front door again. She’s like, “Hey, Mom, how are you doing?” She’s like, “You just cursed me out. I’m not doing very well.” [laughs] She said, “That wasn’t me.” And the way the trailer was laid out, it would’ve been pretty much impossible for her to do that. There was no really no way to get out, I guess, or anything.

I guess my point is, I don’t know what the explanation is. Seems to be a lot of times – not all the time, but a lot of times – linked to younger people. It’s just a very, very odd thing. It’s another thing that makes it so fascinating to spend some time around the campfire. Sandy, thank you for spending some time around the Campfire, and again, thanks to Ashley for telling you about the show.

SANDY: Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Stay spooky!

Crystal is on the line. She is a great supporter of our shows and is always shouting us out on social media, and we really appreciate it. She’s calling from New York State, and she has what she believes is a direct message from her grandmother, and she’s going to tell us all about it. Crystal, welcome to the show. Thank you for all your support, and tell us what happened.

CRYSTAL: Of course. Thank you for having me again. I’m very big into meditation. I do tapping, things like that. Last month, I want to say, I was meditating in the morning and I downloaded a message. I call my grandmother “Nana.” So I got “Nana’s got a message for you, but don’t search it out.” I tend to do that; I look for signs, I look for little synchronicities and things like that. It’s like, “Don’t search it out. It’ll come to you.” I’m like, I’m just going to do my thing and see what I see.

That Saturday, I went to visit my grandmother’s grave with my mom. For me, I didn’t feel anything there. She’s not here; she is wherever she is. I was like, “Wherever you are, I love you. I’m open to your message.” We picked up my niece and nephew and went to an antique shop that my nephew goes to all the time. I mean, they let this kid open the cases. He’s practically employed there. So we’re walking around and he’s showing me everything, and we go to the very last room and I’m walking around and looking at all the stuff. They had a lot of dolls. Creepy stuff.

I looked up, and there was a story that my grandmother used to tell me every time I slept over. And I swear to you, I thought she made this story up. I had no idea it was an actual story. I won’t say the name. It’s an interesting story. I looked up and that book was standing right there, right in front of me. I could see the book on this curio cabinet, and I knew. I was like, “That’s from Nana. That’s her sign.”

JIM HAROLD: So there was this story she would tell you that you thought she made up that was a little bit off-color, and then you went into this antique shop and you saw the book with the title of the story she would always tell you, that you thought was made up.

CRYSTAL: The exact book. It had been read and loved and ended up in this antique shop. I had been stressed about work and money and life and all of that, and I think the message – because in the end, the story is that the little boy is taught to be humble. Don’t be greedy, don’t be a greedy person. And after reading it, I was like, “All right, I hear ya. Stop chasing money, stop chasing the next best thing. Be humble. Be in tune with who you are and what you have, and be happy with what you have. Be a good person.”

JIM HAROLD: I believe that our loved ones get messages to us – and I’ve said this a lot of times, so I’m repeating myself to some extent, but they get messages to us in very specific ways that mean something to us. Somebody else, they see that book, they’d say, “Oh, it’s another book.” It wouldn’t mean anything to them. But that book was meant for you to see and you to get that message. I believe that’s true.

CRYSTAL: And I’m standing in an antique shop bawling my face off. The lady working there was like, “Are you okay?” I told her the story and she’s like, “That’s beautiful,” and she’s got tears in her eyes, and I’m crying in the car and my niece is like, “Why are you crying?” [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Crystal, it’s always great to speak with you. You always have great stories, and I thank you so much for being a part of the show and all of your support.

CRYSTAL: Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Brian is on the line from New Hampshire. He is a return caller, and actually, he’s telling this story a second time – but you’ll never hear the first one because we had a bit of a tech glitch. Those things happen. But Brian was very gracious and said he’d retell his story, so we appreciate it. Brian has a story about his friend, and he’s going to tell it to us. Brian, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.

BRIAN: Hey, Jim. Thanks for having me. This story took place in 2008. Well, it started in 2007. Ended up being around 2008. It’s about my best friend, Chris. As soon as you would step into the room, you would know he was there. He was jolly, loud, boisterous, the embodiment of good cheer and light. He was just such a good dude. He, out of our small circle of friends, was the one who had his stuff together, essentially. Which is why it hit us so hard when he died by suicide.

To say that the year after that was tough would be an understatement. The two of us were renting out a house at the time, and when he was gone I basically stayed there because I didn’t want to leave the place. The house had already been paranormally active before all this started, but it seemed like after he died, things picked up considerably. At the time after he died, I basically had an open door policy. My friends would just come and go. I would come home and there’d be people at my house, which I was all about. We needed to be together at that time.

The first instance of things starting to get a little crazy – my one friend had come over. My friend Chris had a collection of old school video games, so people would come over and play all the time. It was great. We held on to those. So my one friend was over playing games, and he was by himself, and he noticed – my friend’s bedroom still had a lot of his things in the room, and he was there by himself and he noticed that it sounded like somebody was stalking around, stomping, throwing things. He said it was a lot of noise, like somebody was moving things in the room. He quickly left, because he knew he was there by himself. He came back and told me about it, and I came back and I didn’t really notice anything out of the ordinary, misplaced. I just kept that in the back of my mind.

A lot of the darker stuff didn’t happen until I took over the room about a month later. I was like, “Okay, we’re moving on. I’m going to take the bigger bedroom with the bathroom.” So I moved in and I noticed the air was heavier in there a lot of the time after that happened. Probably within the first week, when I was almost asleep, I was lying there and all of a sudden I hear a growling in my left ear. Something growled, and then I felt a cold gust of air, like a snorted breath, hitting the side of my face.

I snapped up and turned the light on and was looking around and there’s nothing there. This happened a few times. This was the start of a lot of the darker aspects that happened with this place.

Then within that first month, I was sleeping and I woke up in the middle of the night – and this happened quite a few times – I would wake up and just feel very – it was just very oppressive in there, like a weight. I would sit up in bed and just hang out because I didn’t really know what else to do. It was during one of those times where I was sitting there and I watched a shadow figure walk from a closed bathroom door, across the front of my bed, and through the bedroom door that was closed. It was this slow stalk. It wasn’t quick. It was making its presence known, it felt like to me, at the time.

There was a lot of that. Other people would come over and hear voices. They would see shadow figures. That was constant. Out of the corner of your eye, you’d see people moving all the time. Voices, whispers, sounds, things moving around on their own. It was just really crazy. And I think a lot of it came from the energy he brought in right before he died. It was just really dark. I think some of it, too, was my grief, my friends’ grief. We all had that with us and I think it fueled it, essentially.

Eventually, a year in, a lot of this started to calm down. This last story is my partner and I were sitting in the living room watching a movie one night, and it was around 10:30, and I noticed a smell in the room. I kept it to myself. I knew exactly what it was, but I didn’t want to say anything, because partially I thought I was losing my mind. There was no way. We had eaten dinner hours ago; there was nothing there. But I noticed she was smelling the air, too, and I asked her, “Do you smell something?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “What is it?” She looks at me and she’s confused. She’s like, “French toast.”

I just smiled, shook my head, and started laughing, because it was the same time of night that my friend Chris would come home from work, and he wouldn’t eat throughout the entire day; he’d wait until he got home and he would make whatever the hell he wanted to eat. It was so random. And more times than not, it was French toast that he would make. So that was what we were smelling.

JIM HAROLD: Well, there you have it. So it ended on as positive a note as it could.

BRIAN: Yeah. I think it was him stopping and being like, “Hey, I’m still here.” It was good.

JIM HAROLD: Again, thank you for sharing this story, and our hearts go out to you. I know it’s been a long time, but still, that’s got to be very painful. Thank you for sharing it.

And we want to say something we always say when the subject of suicide comes up. There is help out there, and it’s easier to get than ever. It is by way of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you are in distress or know someone in distress, you can dial 988 and you will be connected with support. The lifeline provides 24/7 free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States. So certainly if you feel you are in need or you know someone who is, use that number. 988. We want you with us and around.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us, thank you for dealing with our tech issues, and thank you for being a part of the Campfire.

BRIAN: Thank you very much, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Campfire. I am Jim Harold, and appreciate all of our storytellers. And if you have a story to share, please go to jimharold.com/campfire and submit. I know a lot of times the submissions are closed when people want to submit, and now they’re open, and we are in need of stories. So please sign up today, jimharold.com/campfire.

I also have a very special shoutout for two special people. Taylor wrote me and said, “Hi Jim. My brother Nick and my dad Larry have the same birthday on May 19th. My dad introduced us to the Campfire several years ago, and now we all listen, and I’d love it if you could give them a spooky birthday shoutout. Thanks for all you do. Taylor.” Well, Taylor, say no more. Nick and Larry, stay spooky, happy birthday, and Larry, thank you so much for introducing your family to the Campfire family. And y’all stay spooky.

One last thing. Please do support my tour. I mentioned how we had to make a go/no-go call in the next couple of weeks, so we need you to buy those tickets if you want us to be in your town for stories Around the Campfire. It’s going to be jimharold.com/tour. That’s Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, and Boston. I know you guys can come through. I have faith in you, and we’re going to have a fourth quarter comeback here. So jimharold.com/tour, and your support is appreciated.

And thank you for tuning in today to the Campfire. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody! 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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