Multiple poltergeist stories, a Texas ghost tour, an encounter with the real-life Boogeyman, a haunted painting and even MORE on this all-new edition of Jim Harold’s Campfire.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jim (00:00:00):

Poltergeists the Boogeyman, a haunted painting, a ghost tour, and much more on this edition of Campfire. 

Announcer 1 (00:00:22):

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

Jim (00:00:35):

Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold. And if you like true spooky stories, ghost stories, U F O stories, hauntings, cryptic creatures, whatever it might be, you are indeed in the correct place. I am Jim Harold, and so glad that you decided to join me around our virtual campfire, and let’s not delay and get to the first story. Although it’s brand new, I think it is going to be a campfire classic. Well, next up, I know a campfire classic when I see one, and I think we have one here from Jen from Kentucky, and she’s going to tell us something happened about ten-ish years ago. Very, very interesting indeed. Jen, welcome to the show and tell us this. I love this story. 

Jen (00:01:22):

Sure. So I think it was more like 20 years ago, maybe I had emailed incorrectly, but okay, a little backstory. So I was very close to my grandmother. It was my mom’s mom, and she was called Oma, which is German for grandmother. And we were super close, and she passed away in 2002. I did a ton of stuff with her as a child. She really was something special to me. So let’s go to 2003. And I was living outside of Columbus, Ohio in an area called Bexley. I was married and I had three little girls, and we lived in a beautiful house that was probably built in the forties. So I’m sitting, we had a fairly large kitchen that, to be honest, we couldn’t afford to fix up. So we had room for a little child’s, like a wooden square table with four matching wooden chairs for the girls to sit at and eat. And it was around lunchtime, and I was sitting at the table with my second daughter, her name is Josie, and at that time, I’m going to guess she was around four. And we were sitting at the table and I had made her lunch, which was a bowl of SpaghettiOs, had her own…

Jim (00:02:44):

Yay SpaghettiOs! I grew up with those. Those are awesome. 

Jen (00:02:47):

They were awesome. Everybody had their own little set of matching plastic plates and bowls. And so her SpaghettiOs were heated up in her little plastic bowl. And I was sitting just with her at the table, and for some reason, probably because my Oma had passed away around a year ago, I was just making conversation with this four year old and telling her about my Oma and how much I loved her and how close we were. And I don’t remember details about what I was saying, but I was definitely talking about her. And all of a sudden, neither one of us were touching the bowl of SpaghettiOs, the bowl. It was even more than a slide. It went from one corner of the table to another corner and stopped. And the thing that really got me was a little four year old looked at me and said, did that just happen? And I looked at her, I said, wow. Yes, honey, that just happened, and I guess Oma’s listening and she’s with us. So I think the thing that really shocked me, not only that the bowl slid across the table by itself, but a little one acknowledged it and was in shock, and that both of us saw it at the same time. 

Jim (00:04:10):

Well, Jen, there’s only one logical, straight thinking, levelheaded way to look at this. Only one. It was your Oma. 

Jen (00:04:20):

It had to be. I mean it, it had to be, there was no other explanation. And it made me smile. I think it freaked Josie out a little bit, but I knew it was her. 

Jim (00:04:29):

They’re there. They’re listening, and they’re with us. And your Oma and that bowl of SpaghettiOs, prove it. Jen, I love these stories: short but sweet, but super impactful. Thank you so much for sharing it. I’ve got to believe that. Has that informed your thought about, I mean, through life, we lose loved ones and it’s crushing and it’s terrible, but has it in any way provided not only with your own Oma, but maybe with other people who have passed? Has it provided you some comfort in that regard? 

Jen (00:05:04):

Oh, for sure. I, really briefly, I was the youngest of three children and we were separated by five and six years. So I was basically an only child, and Oma was one of maybe five of women who I call my ladies who I was at their houses every weekend. I did a ton of stuff with all of these women, and I have had signs from all of them, I would say since I’ve been an adult. I think the SpaghettiOs was the first thing that happened to me, but quite a few things have happened to me, and so I know that my ladies are with me, they’re watching over me. I think that was the most profound example though. 

Jim (00:05:47):

I think it’s awesome. Jen, thank you so much for joining us today and stay spooky. 

Jen (00:05:54):

Thanks. Stay spooky. 

Jim (00:05:55):

Jennaveave is on the line from my home state, Ohio, O H – I O, and we’re so glad to have her with us. She says she is a lifelong experiencer, but today she’s going to talk to us about a series of events that she believes are very much connected. Jennaveave, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us and tell us what happened. 

Jennaveave (00:06:16):

Thank you. Yeah, so I am going to start out with, this is about 12 years ago, so this is maybe about 16, 17 years old at this time. So I believe these three events are maybe related because they are within the same two months of time. 

Jim (00:06:40):

Jennaveave (00:06:42):

And so basically the first thing, I’m going to go in chronological order. The first thing that happened was, so… I worked at a night shift at a nursing home at the time. So my schedule was, I would wake up at about eight o’clock in the PM and I would go do my errands and I would get something, cook a dinner when I got home. And then I would go to work and I’d have to get to work by about 11. 

Jennaveave (00:07:17):

So one day I wake up normal, I leave my house and I drive to my local Walmart and I get my groceries and I’m driving home. And so I live a little bit outside of town, so there are no streetlights. It’s kind of a country road. So I am turning home. So I take a turn and I’m going probably 35. And so it’s dark at this point. And what I believe at the time, what I saw happened is that a truck with those huge front LED hunter beams was behind me. I thought somebody had just drove up behind me all fast and was essentially trying to run me off the road. It came up, the light from behind my car came up so quickly, I just felt like this was a vehicle, and I instinctually, I just saw a gravel pullover and I pulled off the road.  But this is when it got kind of intense because the moment that I pulled off the road, no vehicle passed me. The light then became something that was above my vehicle, and I had a sunroof or a moon roof, whatever, and this light went above my car. 

Jim (00:08:56):

Oh, man. 

Jennaveave (00:08:58):

Yes. And it was shining down. My whole car was encompassed by this light, and it was something that took my breath away. The reaction that my body had is nothing I’ve experienced since, and it was blue and it was moving, and the way it was moving on the glass was like, the best I could describe it is when light is going through water, that crazy movement it has. So this happened, I don’t know, maybe a count of seconds, and then I got a palpable sensation of being drawn upwards, but I wasn’t. It just vanished. As soon as that being pulled upward, feeling started, this light was gone. And then I’m on a completely dark road pulled over in my car. 

Jim (00:10:03):

Oh, how weird. 

Jennaveave (00:10:04):

And it was crazy silent when all of this happened. It was like my ears were turned off. I couldn’t even hear my vehicle, nothing. So that event happened and it shook me. It’s like one of those things where you’re like, did that happen? So I just gone on the road and I continued going home and I made my food and I went to work, and I kept thinking about it. What was that? It just stuck with me for days. 

Jim (00:10:41):

Well, yeah, absolutely. 

Jennaveave (00:10:43):

Yeah. So that was one event. So the next event that happened was maybe within two, three weeks. My timing on this is a little foggy, so I was a very busy person at this time. I was going to school in the day at some days, and then I’d be working night shift at this nursing home. So it was an intense period of my life. So once again, I’m on my way to work. I’m driving to work. I’m coming from a rural area into the city, so I know these roads. So I’m almost there, and I’m driving my car and I am turning, and there are streetlights and everything. It’s a normal road. And I’m turning onto the road where at the end of the road is where I work, and there’s a little bit of some switchbacks. So I’m turning from a red light, and there’s one switchback, two switchback, three switchback. And I’m like, what is going on? And then it just kept going, and then all of a sudden there’s this really sharp turn. And then I recognized that I am in a canyon actually driving in the mountains in a canyon, and I am completely confused. And I pull over and I get out of the car, and I am in a canyon that I’m aware of. I know this place. I’ve been there. It’s probably 45 miles from where I was. 

Jennaveave (00:12:44):

I don’t know what that is. I don’t know if I had a medical event. I don’t know how I could have gotten there. I don’t have any memory. What I remember is turning onto my street to my work, and then all of a sudden that street just morphs into another road, and that other road is somewhere completely different. It’s a totally far away spot. So yeah, I pulled over and I kind of recognized where I was and was very, very baffled, very confused on that situation. 

Jim (00:13:24):

No wonder, do you have any theories? I mean, the first thing that pops to mind are kind of the classic alien abduction cases, particularly with the headlights and what seems to be maybe missing time and getting to a place you don’t remember driving to and waking up, all of that sounds like kind of classic alien abduction lore. What do you think? 

Jennaveave (00:13:49):

Yeah, so at that time in my life, I was aware of certain elements of alien abduction. I grew up in the advent of media, but I wasn’t that invested into the lore. I wasn’t that aware of those things. And I’ve had previously to this experience, I have seen some unidentified things, but this was so tangible to me. This was like, really affected me. So that’s very possible. I had to drive home and I missed that night of work. That was something that wasn’t something I would’ve done. I’m a very punctual person, and I wouldn’t have just skipped out on work. So it kind of shook my little world at that time. 

Jim (00:14:48):

Yeah, and then did things settle down after that? 

Jennaveave (00:14:53):

No, we could get into it with some other side stories. There were other things going on, some weird things. People call it just high strangeness. There were some high strangeness going on at this. 

Jim (00:15:09):

Well, we usually keep to 10 minutes, but if you have one incident of that you’d like to share, because it is a very compelling story. Go ahead. 

Jennaveave (00:15:18):

What I would like to get to is that third event in the series, if I have time. 

Jim (00:15:23):

Okay, please do. 

Jennaveave (00:15:25):

Okay, so this is maybe a month, month and a half later. This is a time that almost this experience is out of my mind by this point. It comes up, but I’m basically past it now. So I have a friend who lives high up in the mountains, and we had an arrangement when I went to go stay with her that I would park at the bottom of her canyon. It’s a canyon. There is only one road. There’s only one path. And this is an arrangement we had done multiple times. So I would park at this little store that was at the bottom of the canyon, and we would rideshare up there. She would pick me up and we would go up there together. So I’m on my way to the spot. We have plans. She calls me and is like, “Hey, I’m going to have to stop at the store and do some stuff, and so I’ll be a little longer.” 

Jennaveave (00:16:25):

So this means that I am ahead and closer to the canyon than she is. She’s delayed and behind me. So I’m like, okay. And once again, this is about evening. So the sun is starting to set at this point. I get to the meetup spot and I park, and I’m sitting in my car and I’m waiting for her and she’s not there. 30 minutes I believe goes by, and I’m like, okay. So I get a little impatient. I get out of my car. There’s nobody else there. The store’s been closed for a long time. And so I get out of my car and I’m putzing around the parking lot, and I smoke a cigarette and I lean against my car. And then as I get into my car, all of a sudden the air, the temperature just drops like cold, really cold. And this was a summer night. It really doesn’t get that cold. So it was to the point where it took my breath away, and I sit in the car and I look, and all of a sudden I notice that the moon is like where it should not be.  The moon, like when I last saw it, was just barely rising. It just got dark. And now when I’m looking at it, it’s across the sky. 

Jim (00:17:53):

So that’s missing time. That’s missing time, isn’t it? 

Jennaveave (00:17:56):

Yes. Then it turns out that it’s three o’clock in the morning. So the last that I recognize, it was like eight o’clock, 8:30 maybe, now, it’s three o’clock in the morning. And I am like, what just happened? And my phone was dead, and my car, I turned my car on, and I luckily had a little charger, and I charged my phone and I called my friend and she was like, “Hey, where were you? I was waiting for you. I didn’t know where you were. I was there at the store for, it was two hours”. She was up at her house up in the mountains, totally confused. She had called my sister looking for me. There was a little bit of a search for me at that point. 

Jim (00:18:52):

Whoa. 

Jennaveave (00:18:54):

And so I do not know, honestly, I continued my journey up to her house. I just drove up there and I fell asleep. I crashed out, and we talked about it, but I didn’t have anything to say besides I was there. I was there for, in my experience, maybe an hour. Maybe an hour and …. 

Jim (00:19:17):

Wow. 

Jennaveave (00:19:19):

Yeah. 

Jim (00:19:19):

So I mean, is that what you’ve come to the conclusion you were possibly abducted by aliens or something like that? Or do you think there’s another explanation? 

Jennaveave (00:19:29):

I just don’t know. Okay. My car was involved. If I was gone, why wasn’t my car there? If my friend went there and didn’t even see my car, what’s up with that? I’m confused about, it wasn’t just me in the picture, it was me and objects, me and something. 

Jim (00:19:52)

Right. 

Jennaveave (00:19:53)

And my car’s very identifiable. I painted all over it. I put art on things. So yeah, I just don’t know. And that’s the head scratcher part, because I don’t know, and I don’t have memories. I don’t have recurring dreams of anything. It’s literally like I just blipped out of existence for a little bit and blipped back in. 

Jim (00:20:21):

Well, it’s an amazing story, Jennaveave. I really thank you for sharing it, and I hope that somehow, someday you get clarity on it. But thank you for sharing, and perhaps somebody else in our audience has experienced something similar. And if you have, please sign up at jimharold.com/campfire, and maybe we can work towards getting at least more shared experiences out there like that, so people like Jennaveave can maybe get some answers or some additional input on what this could have been. Jennaveave, thank you so much for joining us today on the Campfire. 

Jennaveave (00:20:53)

Yes, thank you. 

Jim (00:20:54):

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Jim (00:21:11):

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Announcer 2 (00:23:08):

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

Jim (00:23:24):

Lindsey is on the line from Alabama. She is a new listener, and we’re so glad to have her amongst the group of Campfire listeners in our great community and audience around the world. And Lindsey’s going to tell us, well guys, have you ever heard of the Boogeyman? Well, Lindsey has not only heard of the Boogeyman, she has seen the Boogeyman. She’s going to tell us all about it. Lindsey, tell us about the Boogeyman. 

Lindsey (00:23:50):

Hey, Jim. 

Jim (00:23:51)

Hey.

Lindsey (00:23:53)

So this story takes place. When I was a little girl, I lived, my grandmother raised my sister and I, and we lived with her. And I was about four or five. I was really, really young, but I remember this vividly. Me and my sister were in the kitchen. We had just gotten out of bed and my grandmother had made us cereal. We were sitting in the kitchen watching tv, and I was doing, we were sitting there eating our cereal, watching tv, and I was doing, like most little sisters do. I was picking on my sister and my big sister, and I really wasn’t doing anything bad or hateful. I was just kind of aggravating her a little bit. And all of a sudden I turned to my right, and that’s the hallway going down the hall. And this big thing came out of my bathroom, and it was standing in the doorway. And I know that it was not my grandmother because it was so tall that he kind of put his hands up in the doorway frame. It just stood there and stared at me. 

Jim (00:25:17):

Whoa. And in your notes, you said that he was hairy? 

Lindsey (00:25:23):

Yes. He was tall and from head to toe, he was hairy, had a gorilla or something, but its face was evil. It was like had evil eyes, and it was sitting there staring at me, and I let out a curdling scream, and it was like my sister, I was screaming for her to look right there. And it was like she was in a trance. She couldn’t, she didn’t even budge. I was just sitting there screaming, crying, and he stared at me, and I watched him, and he turned around, and as he walked out of the door, he put his hand on the wall and just slid it as he was walking out and went back into the bathroom. 

Jim (00:26:20):

Oh my gosh.

Lindsey (00:26:20):

And then I’m sitting there freaking out. And then it was like once he went into the bathroom, my sister and my grandmother both kind of came to me to see what was going on. And I told him what had happened, and I just always said it was the Boogeyman because my grandmother, when we were growing up, she said, if you’re bad, the Boogeyman will come get you. 

Jim (00:26:42):

Wow. So do you think that, first of all, let me be clear. I don’t think that if young brothers or sisters argue with each other that an evil entity should come and terrorize the kids. So I’m not in favor of that, but do you think that whatever this was, was in reaction to you kind of having it out with your sister? 

Lindsey (00:27:06):

Yeah, it felt that way. It definitely felt like I was being punished. 

Jim (00:27:12)

Wow.  

Lindsey (00:27:14)

But as an adult, looking back on it, that’s just nothing for, that’s no reason for something evil to come and get onto you 

Jim (00:27:24):

Right. Now. Let me ask you this. Now, there’s a theory out there that people can create thought forms or Tulpas that they can actually create a being. Not that they’re imagining it, it’s real, but they actually create it through their thoughts. Now, if you had been told that the Boogeyman would get you if you were bad and you were thinking you were bad, do you think it’s possible that, not that you imagined it, but somehow you generated it? 

Lindsey (00:27:54):

It is possible. The only thing that I find kind of odd is that when I was screaming, it was like my sister and my grandmother couldn’t… we lived in a really little house. My sister wouldn’t even turn her head and look at me. I was sitting there screaming, and it’s like they couldn’t hear me screaming or something. 

Jim (00:28:23):

Wow. Wow. That is something. That is something else. That is something else. 

Lindsey (00:28:29):

Not until he went into the bathroom back where he came from, and then they came running in a little bit after that to see about what I was screaming about. 

Jim (00:28:40):

Well, I can tell you, I think we’ve had a couple stories like that through the whole lexicon of stories going back 14 years, but I don’t remember one specifically like that. It is unique story, and if anybody else has experienced it, as we’ve heard today from Lindsey, please sign up at jimharold.com/campfire and share it because we’d love to see if anybody else has seen this Boogeyman. Almost sounds like a bigfoot in a way kind of thing. 

Lindsey (00:29:08):

It does. It kind of reminds me of that. 

Jim (00:29:11):

And also, some people don’t believe that Bigfoot is a flesh and blood creature. They believe it’s like a spectral entity that certainly would fit in with this story. Well, Lindsey, thank you so much for sharing such a unique story today on the Campfire. 

Lindsey (00:29:29):

Thank you, Jim. Stay Spooky. 

Jim (00:29:31):

Stay Spooky. 

Jim (00:29:33)

Hey, it’s Jim here, and I wanted to tell you about a couple of things. We’ll get right back to the stories I promise. First of all, I wanted to tell you about an in-person event. I’m going to be at on October 6th in Kent, Ohio at the Kent Stage. It’s called “Webcast: A Night with Paranormal Podcasts”, and there’ll be Greg and Dana Newkirk. Also, you’ll have****, and then little old me from Jim Harold’s Campfire and the Paranormal Podcast. It’ll be a great time. I hope to see you there. The doors open at 6:00 PM and it will be Friday, October 6th. And for tickets and more information, you can go to kentstage.org. That’s k e n t stage.org. Also, I wanted to tell you about a couple of free podcasts. You may have missed. A happy belated birthday to my daughter Cassandra, who is the host of Unpleasant Dreams. 

Jim (00:30:28):

That is the podcast where she reads classic horror stories, think Lovecraft et al. So if you like that kind of thing, she does a fantastic job, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her dad. It gets great reviews on all the outlets. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. It’s called Unpleasant Dreams, and the host is Cassandra Harold. And then finally, please do check out the free podcast, “You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me”. That also is a family affair. That’s me and Dar Harold talking about weird news and also weird stories from our callers, non- supernatural things that have happened to people, but they are pretty incredible and sometimes actually scarier than a ghost story. So please check out “Unpleasant Dreams”  and “You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me”. They’re both free podcasts and you can find them wherever you find the Campfire. Thanks. 

Jim (00:31:24)

Laura is on the line from Kansas. You might remember a while back, she had those great stories about her grandpa visiting, particularly when some storms came up after his passing. And she has another story from us. Laura is a musician and was in a band, and some strangeness ensued. Laura, welcome to the show. Welcome back, I should say. Tell us what happened. 

Laura (00:31:52):

Hi, thank you. Yeah. Well, this is probably about like oh, five or six years ago, I think. I was in a little cover band for about oh eight years or so. And we just go around and we get hired for private parties and things like that. And we were in Oklahoma a lot. We traveled to Oklahoma and play some of the casinos, and they’d have some private parties. Just a dance band is what we would do. And it was a female fronted dance band. So me and my fellow co-singer, I sang and played keys, and she just sang. But we were playing the Hard Rock, and we were so excited in Tulsa, we were really excited, kind of like, Ooh, awesome. We’re going to go play at Hard Rock. And we stayed in the tower, they have in their hotel, they have a big tower for the hotel, and then they have just the regular hotel part. And we stayed in the older part, which was the tower. And when we got there, we went ahead, loaded in our equipment after we were done and did soundcheck, we went back to our room and got all of our stuff loaded into our room, all of our clothes and everything. And so, I dunno what the bellboy or the assistant person with your luggage. 

Jim (00:33:13):

Yeah, bell Boy. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if that’s still the politically correct term, but I call him bellboy, so sorry. 

Laura (00:33:21):

Yeah, no, that’s fine. That’s what I call him, but I wasn’t sure. But anyway, he helped us upstairs and helped us with all our luggage, and we get to the door, and when you open the door, it was just a terrible design. The bathroom door opens out, and obviously your room door opens in, and so whenever you open that room door, it just would slam. We couldn’t even get in because that bathroom door was open and the handles were kind of like those push down handles kind of like the L shape. And they got tangled and couldn’t even, and I kind of squished my fingers just trying to get in the room, and obviously I’m irritated, so I’ve been like, okay. So I come in, I close the door, we go ahead and get ready to go down to grab some food before our show and everything, and we just kind of get settled, go downstairs. Once again, that door is open before we go out. We hadn’t even gone in the bathroom, but I was like, okay, whatever. So close the door just so we can get out of the room. 

Laura (00:34:31):

And so I closed the door, and so we get out of the room, we go down, we have some supper. Well, when we come back up and we come to get ready for our show and get dressed, hair and makeup, the whole shebang, we’re sitting here and we come inside and that bathroom door is open again. And one thing I forgot to mention is there’s gouges all over, both the door to enter the room and all over the bathroom door. This is a common thing. Obviously that door is so scarred up and scuffed up from this problem. And I hurt my hand pretty badly trying to get in. Again, those doorknobs are getting all tangled and everything. So I’m like, ah. And at this point, I’m just irritated. I smashed my hand again while I’m trying to get these doors untangled. And so I kind of slammed the bathroom door when we get in, and I jiggle it to make sure it’s latched. 

Laura (00:35:29):

And she’s laughing at me this whole time. She’s like, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I’m like, no, I’m good. This door’s not opening. And I made sure it was latched. And then the closet door was open too, which was right next to the bathroom door. And so I was like, look, you’re going to get closed too. And I slammed it too, and I latched it. And so we’re just kind of blowing off some steam about the situation and how frustrating it is while we’re getting ready. And then as we’re getting ready, we’re both over by the beds getting ready. And all of a sudden you hear this click like when you open a door and the latch, somebody’s actually turning the handle or pushing down on the handle, and that bathroom door swings open, and then you hear another. And right after that, the closet door opens, and she looks at me, we both stop. And she says, you saw that, right? And I was like, yes, I saw that. And I went over there and I looked and I was just, but right. I mean, it was so scary. And it was nuts because we both saw it and heard it. And then I was thinking about it, and I was like, you cannot leave the room without that door being closed unless it’s all the way open. 

Laura (00:36:45):

And it was always just a few inches open to where it would interfere with that other door. I don’t know. There’s, I  mean, it’s not even logical that it would be open like that anyway. You have to close it or open it all the way in order to get in and out of the room anyway. 

Jim (00:37:05):

So there was definitely something in there moving things around. 

Laura (00:37:09)

Yeah.

Jim (00:37:10)

So if you think about it though, you talk about backstage and those things, we always talk about haunted theaters and so forth, and it would seem like any place like that, and I’m guessing this place had been around for a while, lots of energy and artists, musicians, actors, those kind of people. In someone who used to participate in some of that on the musical side, I feel like I’m not insulting anybody to say musicians and artists sometimes can be a little emotional, a little high strung. 

Laura (00:37:43):

Oh, a hundred percent! 

Jim (00:37:45):

Not always, but many times. So that energy, I think that energy sticks around whether it might be kind of like we talked about your previous story, if it could be projection when someone was still on this side or someone who has passed over who maybe played that place before. 

Laura (00:38:05):

Yeah, it’s very possible. 

Jim (00:38:07):

Yeah. So do you think that you’re a little more tuned into these things? I know you’ve had multiple experiences. What do you think? 

Laura (00:38:17):

I think I am so I think I’m a little open-minded. It’s not stuff that happens all the time or anything like that, but I definitely know I’m sensitive to a lot of things that maybe other people aren’t as sensitive to. 

Jim (00:38:33):

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. What did your band mates say about all this? 

Laura (00:38:39):

The girl I was with was, we were completely terrified. We tried to talk to, she was just like, oh my gosh. We tried to blow it off. But that night we were both sleeping with our sheets up to our chins, and we were like, is it going to do it again? And nothing else happened the rest of the time we were there, but we called the bass player who’s into paranormal stuff as well, and we were like, Hey, man, switch rooms with us. And he is like, no way. He wouldn’t do it, but yeah. 

Jim (00:39:16):

Wow. Wow. That’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. Well, I know you’ve got even more stories, and hopefully you’ll come back and tell us some of those, too. Laura, thank you for being a part of a campfire. 

Laura (00:39:30):

You bet. Thank you. 

Jim (00:39:29):

Sylvia is on the line. She’s been listening since around the beginning of the pandemic. She’s calling in today from Buffalo. Boy, they’re going to have a good football team this year, for sure, I think. And she has, well, I consider it a very heartwarming story and the kind of story that I love to share on the Campfire. Sylvia, welcome and please tell us what happened. 

Sylvia (00:39:52):

All right. Now I’m going to start by saying I’ve only told the story to a few people, and every time when I’ve told it, I said, I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but this really happened. Now in my lifetime, living on my own, I’ve had four dogs, and the last two were both rescues that came with the name Princess. Well, the last one had such an unusual personality. I wound up calling her Scooby. So she was Princess Scooby. When I went to the S P C A to pick her up, she had been in a puppy mill for eight years. So they said, don’t you want to take her for a walk? So I take her for a walk, and she’s very lethargic, and I thought, I’m an old lady. She’s an old lady. We’ll get along fine. But when I got her in the car, she turned into a completely different dog. 

Sylvia (00:40:42):

She started jumping all over me, kissing me, trying to get in my lap, and that was her personality from that day forward. Now, one of her favorite things was to always, every single day, she got a little ice cream cup, and she would take it in her little tiny teeth, go into the living room in the middle of the rug and eat it. So finally the day came when I had to put her to sleep because she had tumors in her throat and was having difficulty breathing. Now, this dog would never let anybody into the house. She would turn into this wild maniac. So the day before, I spent the day talking to her and telling her what was going to happen. When the vet arrived, she just went, she never barked. She just went to the couch, stretched out and waited. So when it was all over that night, I couldn’t take looking at all her stuff in the living room. She had made this little nest where she stole pillows and blankets, and so I cleaned everything up. So the living room was completely cleaned. Now, the one thing that Princess Scooby was afraid of was other dogs, while I believe in the Rainbow Bridge. So I said out loud, Princess Scooby, you need to cross the Rainbow Bridge, and I need to know that you made it to the other side. The next morning when I woke up, there was one little empty ice cream cup sitting in the middle of a living room carpet. 

Sylvia (00:42:08):

So now you see why I think people think I’m crazy,

Jim (00:42:09)

No!

Sylvia (00:42:10)

So it made me smile, and I just said out loud, Hey, you other guys, because remember, I had four dogs. I said, why couldn’t you have sent me a message too? The next morning when I woke up, there were four empty ice cream cups on the living room carpet. 

Jim (00:42:29):

Oh my gosh, you just gave me chills. Ooh, oh my!

Sylvia (00:42:32):

Now there’s a little more to the story. So I had figured that after this, that maybe I would just foster dogs. But friends of mine sent me this link about this cat that had been tortured for two years, had cage rage. So obviously nobody wanted to adopt her from the pet rescue, so I just said, I’ll take her. So the first thing you do besides buying litter boxes is you buy them like 25 toys. So she had all these little toys. So the one day I came home and the toys were in a perfect circle on the living room carpet. Another day I came home and her little toys were in a semicircle, and there was this one big toy facing them, like he was preaching to the choir. Another day, I left out some dry treats in the kitchen, and when I came home, they were in a perfect square. Another day, there was a letter J on the living room carpet. So I said out loud, “Princess Scooby, I don’t know if you’re doing this because I found so much joy in the ice cream cups. You’re still doing this, or if you’re haunting my cat, but you need to stop it cuz getting weird.” From that day on, it’s stopped. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. 

Jim (00:43:43):

Oh, wow. Wow. What a great story. I know you said, oh, you think I’m crazy? No, I think it’s one of the nicest stories we’ve ever had on a campfire and…

Sylvia (00:43:52):

Thanks, well, I hope that people who have lost pets will believe in the Rainbow Bridge because of this story, and know that I really believe that after I pass away, I’m going to cross the Bridge and I’m going to be attacked by a whole bunch of fur balls. 

Jim (00:44:10):

Aww, Very sweet. Very sweet. Sylvia, thank you so much for sharing this very special story on the Campfire. 

Sylvia (00:44:15):

Well, thank you for letting me tell it. 

Jim (00:44:17):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Grammarly, and I have been using Grammarly for years, a paying user before they ever sponsored any of my shows, because when it comes to writing, Grammarly is there to support you and me from beginning to end. For over 10 years, Grammarly has been powered by AI technology you can trust and rely on to help you across all the places where you write the most. And now Grammarly helps you do even more with one click. You can easily brainstorm, rewrite and reply quickly with suggestions based on your context and goals, so you can improve productivity for you and your teams. Now, I use Grammarly for my weekly newsletter. I do a column, and I think I’m a pretty good writer, and I’m pretty good with grammar and things, but I’m not perfect, and Grammarly always makes my column better. 

Jim (00:45:13):

Now they don’t do the work for me or those kind of things. Certainly not, but it is a helper and it is fantastic. So I love Grammarly, and not only does it help me. I could think of how it could help so many people out there. It could help new grads who are job hunting, or people in different occupations write better, and I just think it is so neat. Now, for example, let’s say you’re feeling stuck with writing at work. Grammarly can help you get started with ideas, outlines, and even tips. For example, you could say, give me 10 possible taglines for a video thumbnail, and boom, it will give it to you. If you need to polish your writing. Grammarly can help paraphrase and rewrite to be more concise. Instantly, you simply select the text that you want to rewrite and give Grammarly a prompt. 

Jim (00:46:04):

You can say Improve it. You can say Shorten it, and it’ll go to work. And what I love about, it’s like a give and take, because you can say, well, I like that suggestion. I don’t like that suggestion, and it is a helper. And even though I’m a paying user, you don’t have to pay to use it. That’s right. The best part is, is that it’s free to use. You’ll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com/go to download for free today. That’s G R A M M A R L Y.com/go. Again, that’s G R A M M A R L Y .com/go. And we thank Grammarly for their support of the Campfire 

Announcer 2 (00:46:46):

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

Jim (00:46:57):

Next up is Liz from Wisconsin. Her friend Adam told her about the Campfire. So thank you, Adam, and follow Adam’s example, and please tell your friends that’s how we get the word out, and we get great stories. Liz wants to talk to us about her boyfriend and signs. Liz, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us your story. 

Liz (00:47:23):

Thanks, Jim. Yeah, my boyfriend passed away in January, and I’ve been listening to your show for a while, and ever since he passed away, I’ve been hearing more and more, especially on your show about signs that people get and they say, oh, just pick out a sign, make sure you’re clear about it, and then look for it. Well, there was one day I was just having a bad day. I was just having a hard time, and I was like, okay, I need to talk to him. So out loud, I said, okay. To my guides, to his guides, to him, I said, we’re meeting here at 11 o’clock. Come sit on the couch. We have 10 minutes. Everybody. Get him on the couch. I need to talk to him. And so then 11 o’clock rolled around and I said, Hey. I said, I miss you. I love you. I said, but I need something. I need some sort of sign from you. 

Jim (00:48:13):

Sure. 

Liz (00:48:15):

Sorry. But it was just,

Jim (00:48:18):

I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Liz. I’m just sorry about your boyfriend. I’m so sorry to hear about this. 

Liz (00:48:25):

Yeah, it’s just obviously it’s been tough, but yeah, so I said, I need something from you. I was getting all these feelings, and you can’t really validate that. You can just make that up and you feel like you’re making stuff up when you’re really, really sad. So I was like, okay, well, I miss you. I love you. I said, your sign is a hawk. I said, I don’t care if you don’t like hawks, I don’t care about anything. And I said, that’s going to be your sign. So after crying a bit and everything, I was feeling better. I’m like, okay. And I live in Milwaukee. It’s a city. It’s not out in the country, so I don’t expect to see hawks everywhere I go or anything. But that moment I got up and I went. I was like, oh, I have to go clean my car out. 

Liz (00:49:12):

So I walked out to my car and I opened my door, which is a side door, and it’s about 10 feet away from the house next to it. I opened the door, and that second a hawk came swooping down, and I could literally feel the air off of the wings. It scared me. I was like, Holy S word. What the F word? I was just cussing. I was like, oh my gosh. It landed in the tree right across the street. So I took a picture of it. I was like, that’s really a hawk. I was like, wow, 

Jim (00:49:42):

That’s awesome. 

Liz (00:49:43):

I was just flabbergasted. I was like, okay. And I told my friend about it, and she was like, well, he couldn’t have been more clear without hitting you in the face with a hawk. I was like, he was very close though. 

Jim (00:49:54):

Absolutely. Then, Go ahead.

Liz (00:49:56):

Yeah. Then a couple months later, I was thinking about him also, and I was driving down to the Chicago area, which is the last time I was down there was to see him. So I was with my kids, and I was walking back to my car from a gas station, and I looked down and I saw a picture, but it was upside down, and I don’t normally just pick up trash, but I looked at it and I was like, so I picked it up and it was a picture of a hawk that somebody had taken and gotten printed out at Walgreens or something, and I was just like, like, oh. Oh my gosh. So it’s just those little signs, and I mean, sometimes they’re big signs too, and it was just super cool, and I just wanted to say thank you for doing this show because it’s so important that people know that this is an accessible thing. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t hear it on the show multiple times, and I just encourage everyone to just give it a try. Really nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

Jim (00:50:54):

It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t cost anything. And I think, and I’ve said this on previous calls, maybe even previous calls today, that I think that our loved ones on the other side don’t know why, but they put these chess pieces in place and make things happen. You had a story about when you were at a mall, an outlet mall, something like that happened, right? Oh, 

Jen (00:51:14):

Yeah. Yeah. That one’s super cool. I was getting my tires changed, so that takes about an hour, and it was near all these shops, so I figured, oh, I’ll just go look around the stores. I wasn’t really looking for anything, and as I was walking, I was thinking, I’m like, oh, he would want to hang out with me right now, and I kind of felt like he was there. But I mean, you just imagine this. You feel like you imagine this stuff when you’re really upset or sad. So I went in a store and I saw this statue, and I was like, gosh, I just love this statue. I’m like, this is totally not something I would normally like. 

Liz (00:51:57):

But I was just thinking about him, and I was like, I’m like, are you really here with me? I’m like, do you see this statue? I’m like, it’s not something I would normally like. So I was like, okay, I’ll get it. It’s 10 bucks. So I went and I got in line, and about five minutes, five to seven minutes later, I was like, this statue is hideous. I’m like, I’m like, why do I even want this? So I got out of line and I put it back, and I walked out, and as I was walking past the next door, a kid walked out with my boyfriend’s last name on his back, and I was just like, oh my gosh. I’m like, I’m, it’s just, it’s cool. It’s just really cool. You just ask for signs and then they give them to you. 

Jim (00:52:40):

Yeah, I think it’s a great thing. I do indeed. And it’s interesting. I had something just a little while ago. My dad had asked me to pick up a greeting card for him, my elderly dad, and I said, no, you should pick it out. Was for special occasion, you should pick it out because it’s your card. And I think it was that day I had that discussion. Then I went to shopping for him. He wasn’t with me, and I saw a woman who looked just like my mom, and so much so, that I was acting like I was looking for stuff around that area. I didn’t need anything, but I was just trying to look at this woman, and it looked like my mom. Usually they say it’s when they’re younger, but she actually looked older than when she passed like what she would be now, same hairstyle, same glasses and everything, same handbag, shoes, everything was same. 

Liz (00:53:28):

Oh, wow. 

Jim (00:53:29):

And the weird thing was is I thought to myself, oh, I saw a woman like this about seven or eight years ago, cuz my mom passed 10 years ago. 

Jim (00:53:41):

And then I said, I thought, oh, maybe that’s her. She’s just aged. And then I realized I’m in a totally different part of town. I mean 45 minutes away, so I mean, no. 

Liz (00:53:53):

And years later. 

Jim (00:53:54):

Yeah, it’s probably not her, but I just thought that was weird, that juxtaposition. And I felt like a stalker because kind of looking at her and then I walk away and I’m looking again, and it’s like, this woman’s going to think I’m some kind of weirdo, which could be the case, but not in this case. But regardless, I do believe that they kind of wink and nod at us, and I think it means a lot. Means I know it means a lot to me and something I really never considered except for the last 10 years. And… 

Liz (00:54:29):

I feel like… 

Jim (00:54:30):

Go ahead. 

Liz (00:54:30):

There’s just been a lot of it going on lately. I’ve noticed more. The more I listen to your show, the more I hear those stories, and I wonder if it’s because they are being mentioned on your show. So people are giving it a try, and they’re really getting results from it. 

Jim (00:54:43):

Like it’s one…

Liz (00:54:46):

Getting their validation. 

Jim (00:54:47):

Like you said, it’s one of those things that doesn’t cost any money. You don’t have to pay anybody to do it. And there’s really, I don’t see any harm in it. I’m very cautious about telling people about spiritual practices. I’m very cautious about that. But something like that, I don’t see any downside. If you’ve had your sign, please let’s note jimharold.com/campfire and sign up to tell your story like Liz did. Liz, thank you again, my sympathies over your loss. 

Liz (00:55:13):

Thank you.

Jim (00:55:14):

But it sounds like your boyfriend is still there with you. 

Liz (00:55:18):

Oh, definitely. 

Jim (00:55:21):

Thank you for being a part of the show. 

Liz (00:55:23):

Thank you. 

Jim (00:55:24):

Amy is on the line from Waco, Texas. We’re so glad to speak with her today. She’s been listening for a long time, and she’s been on the show before. And she’s going to tell us about a haunted ghost tour and the strangeness that ensued. 

Amy (00:55:38):

Yes. Hello, Jim. How are you? 

Jim (00:55:40):

I am doing well. I am in fine fettle. 

Amy (00:55:43):

Okay. 

Jim (00:55:50):

Tell us what happened. 

Amy (00:55:50):

Oh,Wow. So I did a walking haunted tour in Waco, and I guess for a little bit of background, in May of 1953, there was a very, very bad tornado that hit Waco. And my grandfather was in the tornado, and he worked at a business downtown and we’re walking by that area in the ghost tour. And there was a lady that worked in a building two doors down from where he did. And the tour leader said, we’re going to be talking to this ghost named Mary. She’s usually very, very communicative when we have tours. So y’all just make sure and kind of see what happens. And I was actually holding an EMS detector at the time, and we got up there and he said, Mary, are you here? And it kind of flashed red real quickly, and then that was it. And he was like, well, she usually talks more, but that’s okay. And a lot of the people were talking in little side conversations. So I decided to say, Mary, did you know my grandfather? And I said his name, and it lit up on red for 10 seconds. 

Jim (00:57:16):

Huh, Wow. 

Amy (00:57:16):

It was really, really cool. It’s a very short story, but I thought it was really, really cool because she passed in the tornado, but she knew who my grandfather was. 

Jim (00:57:28):

Wow. That’s pretty wild. So you specifically asked the spirit, or the spirit was specifically asked, did the spirit know your grandfather? And the detector went crazy, basically? 

Amy (00:57:42):

Yes. 

Jim (00:57:42):

Wow, That is pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, that’s short and sweet. But to get that kind of direct feedback, because sometimes I am a little skeptical of the different meters and things, but when you ask a question and then it goes way off the charts, that’s pretty remarkable. Wow, that’s pretty neat.

Amy (00:58:00):

That’s exactly how I felt at the time. And a lot of the other people were like, okay, this is a joke. But everybody perks up really quickly when that happens, 

Jim (00:58:11):

That’ll get your attention. Well, Amy, thank you for this very short and very sweet Campfire story, and I’ve got to believe you’re going on more ghost tours. 

Amy (00:58:22):

Of course. 

Jim (00:58:25):

Thanks for being a part of the show today. 

Amy (00:58:28):

All right. Thank you, Jim. 

Jim (00:58:29):

Up next on the show is Bri from North Carolina. Now Bri is going to share a story, and we’ve had a couple of stories in this vein before, and this is a story about a painting. And if you’ve listened to the show a long time, you know we’ve had some amazing stories about paintings, and I can’t wait to hear this one. Bri, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened. 

Bri (00:58:55):

Thanks for having me. So this happened around 2018 or so. My mom and her sister, they have their own cleaning company, and they became particularly close to this one client, and this client needed a PA. So my mom was like, Hey, are you interested? And at that time, I hated my job, so I jumped at the chance. So this woman ends up getting this painting, I believe it was from a vintage store, and she’s telling my mom about it. She’s like, I felt drawn to the painting. It was a woman, if I recall correctly. And she’s like, and it was calling to me, so I was like, I got to have it. So she buys it,  brings it into the house, and before they knew that she had bought the painting, my mom was like, something feels weird, but she doesn’t like anything spooky. So she was like, try to ignore it. 

Bri (01:00:00):

So I am, to a degree, I would say I’m half skeptic, half believer, where anything I can chalk up to sleep paralysis, bad wiring, that’s my favorite go-to, even for my own experiences. 

Jim (01:00:12):

Fair enough. Fair enough. 

Bri (01:00:13):

Yeah. I think I just don’t want to be scared. So while this woman is telling my mom and my sister about this painting, she’s telling her how she feels off, but she still wanted the painting. She feels drawn to it. The painting falls off the wall and it has a glass, and that glass just goes everywhere. So all of them were kind of wigging out. So they cleaned it up and still my mom was like, this doesn’t feel right, but let’s keep going. So when I went to visit this woman about this job, and also to check out the house, because even though I was kind of wigged out, I still love paranormal stuff. 

Jim (01:01:01):

One quick question, for maybe people who don’t know, explain what a PA is. 

Bri (01:01:06):

Oh, like a personal assistant, essentially. Yeah. So we pull up and pretty much, I’m not even in the house. We’re barely even in the driveway. And I already feel like I’m being watched, which I found very strange because, well, I didn’t feel that way two seconds prior, and the feeling doesn’t subside at all. If anything, it just gets worse once inside the, I’m inside the house. So we get a text from the woman, she’s like, Hey, I’m not there yet. And my mom and my sister were there to clean, and I was going to take the chance to meet her. So she’s like, I’m not here there yet, so please just go in. It’s fine. So since she’s not there and I don’t want to just sit there, I start helping them clean and stuff. So literally every single room that I went into, I felt like I was being watched. And I’ve had experiences like that before where my stuff is just mainly feelings that I’ve had. 

Bri (01:02:10):

But literally every single corner that I went into, I was so uncomfortable. So I go upstairs and I’m cleaning this one bedroom and I’m by myself, and I just hear this massive crash, and I’m talking extremely loud right outside the door for this bedroom. And it sounded like almost, like an entire bookshelf of just stuff just fell. Yeah. And I thought that was very strange at first, but immediately, my sister at that time had recently had some medical issues, so immediately I’m panicking. I’m thinking if she fell and knocked stuff over on the way down or worse, something fell on her because that’s how loud it sounded. So I run out of the room and pretty much I ran into my mom at the top of the steps because she heard it too. And she was in another room, and she’s also afraid for my sister because of this medical issues that she’d been having at the time. 

Bri (01:03:10):

And we’re calling out her name, we’re looking for her. We run downstairs, she’s fine. When we tell her, Hey, this is what happened, this is what we heard. She’s like, oh. She’s like, I just heard a bump, like a small bump I guess. And the house is not, it wasn’t a mansion, but it was like a two story. But even if something had fallen upstairs, you would’ve still heard it if you were downstairs. So at that point, we’re all on edge, so we’re all looking at each other with just question marks all over our faces, and if something fell, let’s look and clean it up. So we looked from top to bottom in that house looking for the source of whatever this crash is in literally every room, garage, attic, nothing. We found no source of where that noise could have come from, and the attics are not the ones that are above. 

Bri (01:04:07):

They’re the ones that are in a closet, almost like a crawlspace sort of. So we could see everything in the small sort of crawlspace attic thing, and we never found anything that could have made such a loud sound. And I was like, we got to get out of here because it was just, honestly, everything has happened to me, I can try to chalk up to, well, maybe I was reading something scary, I was watching something scary, or the wiring’s bad. That’s the one that I just don’t have any sort of, I guess, reasoning for what we could have all heard that. 

Jim (01:04:50):

So you track it all back to this painting, you feel? 

Bri (01:04:54):

I think so, because my mom and my sister had been there before and they’re like, we’d always been super friendly with this woman. We’d have tea and stuff, and we never felt like that until after she got that painting. 

Jim (01:05:07):

What was, maybe you mentioned it and I missed it, but what was the painting of? 

Bri (01:05:11):

Oh yeah. It was just a woman. She had those sort of, if I recall correctly, 18 hundreds type dress because I personally never saw it myself. She got rid of it as soon as it broke because, well, the glass had broken. She didn’t want to fix it, but even after that, it still felt odd. 

Jim (01:05:33):

Yeah, paintings are interesting. Paintings are interesting, and sometimes it interests me whether reproductions or if they’re originals or whatever, but if you think about any object, if it’s around people, I think it can pick things up. I think it can pick up things that are positive and I think maybe sometimes it can pick up things that are negative. And we’ve had some real, as I say, humdingers of stories about paintings, and I just think there’s something very mystical about them, particularly original works, because it’s really capturing a subject that’s like capturing the essence of a subject. It’s the artist imbuing it with their emotion and so forth. I think, much like theaters are very apt to be haunted. So do I think that things like paintings, because it involves so much of the human soul and so much of the human condition, 

Bri (01:06:31):

Right? Yeah, definitely. And I can say that after this, it has definitely made me think twice about buying things from vintage and estate sales and stuff. 

Jim (01:06:39):

No, me too. I used to love doing that. And there’s two reasons I don’t. First of all, Dar, my wife, says why are you bringing home that junk, although my daughter Natalie’s kind of inherited my love for old stuff. And then secondly, I do think about that from time to time. What are you bringing home? Where was this? Who owned it exactly? Many times if you are interested in things like the kind of things I’m interested in, old radios, old records, old books, things like that. I mean, more likely than not, the person, at least somewhere down the chain, someone that owned that has passed, and you just kind of wonder, hmm,what am I getting into? 

Bri (01:07:24):

Yeah, and you don’t know how many hands it has passed through. 

Jim (01:07:30):

One of my favorite guests on our other show, the Paranormal Podcast over the years has been John Zaffis, The Haunted Collector who’s been on TV on and off for years, and he always cautions about that kind of stuff. But go ahead. I interrupted you. I’m sorry. 

Bri (01:07:43):

Oh, no. Then I was like, I’m very much like a believer of that, as people, we kind of leave our spiritual fingerprints essentially on things. And if you were not a very happy person and maybe you were into this sort of a cult and you don’t know how, maybe just getting into it and don’t know how to take care of yourself things and stuff, I firmly do believe that they can attach themselves to our things. 

Jim (01:08:16):

I believe it. I believe it. Bri, thank you so much for joining us today on The Campfire and Stay Spooky and I guess stay skeptical, kind of, sort of. 

Bri (01:08:29):

Kind of, sort of. Yes, thank you, Jim. 

Jim (01:08:30):

Go to jimharoldplus.com and click on the banner with my smiling face and you’ll learn all about my Paranormal Plus Club. And it comes in two great flavors. First of all, we have our Spooky Studio app through Libsyn, and that’s cross platform. That’s if you want to listen on all different devices, Windows, Android, maybe mix in an Apple here and there, but basically you don’t like to be stuck to one particular platform, that’s what you want to check out and you get that information over at jimharoldplus.com. Then you say, no, that’s not me. I love Apple Podcasts. I love nothing but Apple Podcasts. That’s how I listen. Well, they’ve got a great solution too. That’s our newer solution and that is our Spooky Studio channel over on Apple Podcasts. And you can subscribe right from Apple Podcasts and you can get very convenient access if you’re an Apple Podcast person. You say that’s the only way that I listen to the shows is through Apple Podcasts, then that is the way to go, and whatever the flavor, you get so much content. I don’t think people realize until they get in. First of all, you get almost 600 episodes on the Campfire that are not available any longer on the free feeds. Then you get the Paranormal Podcast, you get over 770 episodes, no longer on the free feeds. Going back to 2005. Then, and this is what people really miss, we have exclusive, even people who have subscribed miss this, we have exclusive shows that come out eight episodes a month every month since I think February of 2011, We’ve been putting out eight exclusive episodes, not on the free feeds. That includes UFO Encounters, if you are into UFOs. Ghost Insight, if you’re into ghosts, and I know you are, if you’re listening to the Campfire. The Cryptid Report about creepy cryptid creatures. The Other Side, which gets deep in metaphysical. or Ancient Mysteries On the Air where we talk about things like ancient astronauts and were there aliens in the old times. Some people say yes, some people no, but we talk about it and many other mysteries, like how were the great pyramids built? Lots of great stuff. If you add just those exclusive episodes together, you get over 950 episodes. And the other thing is it supports the shows. So I hope you’ll check it out, jimharoldplus.com. Again, if you’re on your Apple device, you can also search for my Spooky Studio channel on Apple Podcasts. And we thank you so much. Stay Spooky. 

Announcer 2 (01:11:28):

You are listening to Jim Harold’s campfire. 

Jim (01:11:31):

Katrina is on the line from the American Midwest. We’re so glad to speak with her and she has a story for us. Katrina, welcome to the show. I appreciate it. I know you see, you go to sleep with Campfire every night, and I appreciate it. And please tell us what happened. 

Katrina (01:11:49):

I do. Well, I would say I’m not really, I’ve been listening to your podcast for a couple years now. I am open-minded, I think when it comes to all things paranormal, and I listened to your podcasts. I’ve read a few books and stuff, but I had an experience and it was not spooky, it was not scary, but I would say it was fun and helpful. This was early on in Covid I, I’m a marketing consultant and I work from home, but I travel a lot. And I had been home for eight months or so, and my husband was working from home, and my kids were schooling from home, and frankly, they were driving me a little crazy. So my husband’s like, sweetie, why don’t you just get away for a few days? I had a foot surgery coming up that I’d been putting off. I was going to be off my feet and really immobile for six weeks. 

Katrina (01:12:37):

So I thought, you know what? That’s a good idea. So I scheduled a hotel at this in Indiana, which was a few hours drive, and it’s called the most haunted hotel in Indiana. It was built in the mid 1800s and has been through several incarnations, including the Jesuits, owned it for 30 years and lived there. But in its heyday, it was very luxurious. People like Al Capone, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Harry Houdini, Louis Armstrong, and several presidents, Howard Hughes, Bob Hope, all these famous people stayed there. So I thought, that sounds like a fun place to go. Maybe I’ll have something exciting happen while I’m there. So this was November, 2020. I booked my stay. I drove over there and I actually went ghost hunting. I’m creeping around what’s supposed to be the spookiest floor. And when I arrived, I asked everyone, so the people who worked there, I’m like, have you had any paranormal experiences? 

Katrina (01:13:30):

And actually the girl at the front desk was like, well, one night I was working very late. It’s just me and the security guard. And I thought I saw him pass behind me and go to the back office, and I went back there and nobody was there. So I called him on the phone or walkie talkie, whatever, she goes, and he was on a different floor. And I was like, oh, that was creepy. So then I was getting in the gift shop, and there was an older lady who’d been there for a while, and I said, so have you had anything spooky happen to you? And she’s like, well, yes. I was working one day and there was nobody around. And I had these two baskets of stuffed animals by the entrance, only one entrance. She goes, there’s nobody around. And I turned my back for a little while and all the animals would be dumped out on the floor and she’d say, I’d turn over the baskets. I put ’em all back in. I turned my back for a little while and nobody went around. I’d come back and they’d all be dumped out on the floor again. She said, this went on all day. So I’m like, okay, well, that’s kind of funny. So I went ghost hunting, didn’t find anything. Okay, well, I came here to rest. So I went to my room and I got in this whirlpool tub, which I specifically requested because my feet hurt and my knees hurt. So I’m sitting in this whirlpool tub and I start looking around for the buttons, and there were a couple buttons I pushed and nothing happened. And I’m like, I sat there for a couple minutes looking for other buttons or ways to turn on this whirlpool tub. And I said out loud, I said, well, Katrina, there has to be a button or a switch around here somewhere. And just then I heard a scraping noise to my right, and I look over where the sound came from, and there’s a switch plate on the wall with a knob on it, but it’s turned, the switch plate is crooked now, and the wires are exposed. And I looked at it and I said, yeah, well, thank you. 

Katrina (01:15:19):

So unfortunately, I got out, I turned to the knob and the whirlpool tub still didn’t work, but I just thought that was an answer to my question. And it’s funny because I did some research afterward, and evidently there was the owner of the hotel a Mr. Taggart, they say, still watches over the hotel, and people will smell his cigar smoke and they’ll hear parties. Supposedly people have heard his horse trotting down the hall, and there’s a bellhop that makes appearances every once in a while. So it’s almost as if the people who worked there long ago are still there kind of helping out. So I just figured it was a helpful chambermaid or something, giving me a little nudge. So I’m like, well, okay, thank you very much. But it still didn’t work. But that’s the closest I’ve come to a paranormal experience. Although I did have an experience one other time at a hotel in Chicago, but I had my makeup bag sitting on the vanity, and it’d been there for a good hour or so, and it just fell off. It just suddenly fell off. And this was an older hotel. I like staying in older hotels, and I just said, don’t worry, I’ll be gone by tomorrow. Just stayin’ one night. And that was all that happened. 

Jim (01:16:26):

And older hotels are cool. And there was one that I stayed out in the west, and I won’t name the name of it, but very beautiful hotel, and they did the nice thing where the rooms were updated and things. It had all the modern amenities, but really the character of it, you walked into the main lobby and it literally looked like you were walking into 1927. 

Katrina (01:16:46):

Oh, yeah. 

Jim (01:16:47):

They even had a glass case where they had the old hotel directory from the twenties, and they had the old black dial telephone from that era. And it really was, you stepped in there and you’re like, whoa. It’s like I’m in a Stephen King movie. 

Katrina (01:17:07):

Yes, there are a few of those in Chicago, yes. 

Jim (01:17:11):

But the funny thing was is that I said, this place has got to be haunted. So I googled it and it turned out there were some stories and I asked one of the staff members, and they’re like, oh, we don’t talk about that.

Katrina (01:17:21):

We can’t talk about it. Yes. 

Jim (01:17:23):

But it’s interesting. Some places kind of poo-poo it and they say, Hey, we’re a serious hotel, and that ghosty stuff, that’s silly. And then others embrace it. 

Katrina (01:17:33):

Embrace it, yes. 

Jim (01:17:34):

Yeah, it’s interesting, that kind of dichotomy. 

Katrina (01:17:36):

Whenever I stayed at an older hotel, which I often try to do, the first thing I do is I google, I’m like, is this hotel haunted? And there was one I was going to stay at, I can’t remember where it was, but it was scary. Haunted. People claim they can’t sleep through the night because of this and that. I’m like, well, I don’t want that. I want a happy haunting. I don’t want scary haunting. So I won’t stay at those. But I do, whenever I stay in an older hotel, which I try to do, I always say, is it haunted? So I will keep doing that because it’s just fun. And I’m not scared yet. I haven’t been scared yet, but it was just a fun little experience that I look back on and just sort of chuckle and Oh, that was kind of fun and nice, even though the whirlpool tub still didn’t work. 

Jim (01:18:15):

Yeah, yeah. There was one I think in Philadelphia that I had stayed at, and I found out after I left, that it was supposedly haunted and it’s like uh…

Katrina (01:18:28):

Kind of want to know going in, kind of what you’re in for.

Jim (01:18:29):

Want to know the mistake I make those, I don’t think about, these were both really old looking hotels. I need to check into the mall because even it’s like people sometimes build a new house and then the house is haunted, and they’re like, well, how’s that happen? You also associate it with ones that have been around a long time. But I guess any place if it’s built on the right place or… 

Katrina (01:18:56):

On the right ground,

Jim (01:18:57):

Yeah, anything could be haunted. 

Katrina

Yeah, you never know. It’s underneath that house, I guess, unless you check. 

Jim (01:19:02):

Well, Katrina, thank you so much about telling us about this haunted hotel and for listening to the podcast. 

Katrina (01:19:09):

Thank you very much, Jim. I appreciate it. 

Jim (01:19:11):

Oh, we have a return caller. Always glad to have people come back on the show. Jason from Hawaii is here and he’s, I think three different short stories for us today, and we’re so glad to have him with us. Jason, welcome back to the show, and I’m always glad when people come back because that way I know that I didn’t scare them off. So thanks for joining us and tell us your stories. 

Jason (01:19:37):

The first one has to do with a ghost entrepreneur. That’s the title of that story. Cool. It happened about 17 years ago. I was in Vietnam and my cousin took me to the countryside and he was saying, oh, I was surprised. You’re going to really love this. When we finally got there a couple hours later, there was this lady and she had, her husband had passed away and she could communicate with him. So she gave us a piece of cardboard with just torn from a box and a piece of paper, just a small piece of paper, and we held it and we would ask questions. We didn’t touch the paper, we just held onto the cardboard, and it was yes or no, there was a Y and N on the cardboard, and it would slide. You would ask a question, and then nothing would happen for one or two seconds. Then you would see an invisible finger press onto the paper and slide it in a direction. 

Jim (01:20:48):

So it looked like, except you didn’t see the finger, but it looks like it moved it. Wow. 

Jason (01:20:54):

It looked like something out of Harry Potter. And I stayed there. We stayed there for 20 minutes and we talked to her. She said that she, her husband, she figured out that her husband could do this, and this was a side business that helped her income monthly. It helped about maybe 40% of what he would’ve made if he was still alive. And this was a supplemental income for her, and we were so curious. My cousin, he spoke two languages, three languages and three more, some words, and it would only respond  in English, even though he never spoke English in life, and his wife didn’t speak English, but I could speak English and this thing would move yes or no. 

Jim (01:21:46):

So it was almost like a spiritual translation. Wow. 

Jason (01:21:50):

Yeah. We basically gave her a donation, like 10 or $20. 

Jim (01:21:54):

Now, you also have a story about a famous rock star, right? 

Jason (01:21:58):

Yeah. This happened about Kurt Cobain. It was six months after he had passed away, and I was still grieving every day I was in college, and one day I had this dream where I was in a campfire, a large, like a bonfire, maybe. There was 20 people around it, and I was seated next to a girl, and then there was many bonfires. And for some, I don’t remember how I knew we were waiting to talk to Kurt Cobain. And I remember talking to this girl for hours, getting to know her, and then finally Kurt came and talked to us for an hour, both of us at the same time. And I remember him laughing and smiling. He seemed happier than any interview I saw in life. And when I woke up, I still had a couple of times where I felt sad, but when I remembered the dream, I always felt like maybe that really was him, because it did make me feel better. A lot of people commit suicide, time of copycat suicides. A lot of people were grieving, and I always felt like maybe that was really him trying to help people get over the grieving. 

Jim (01:23:30):

And I’ll just happen to mention because of the suicide piece of this, that if anybody out there is in crisis, 988 is the national hotline for help. If you or a loved one is in crisis and you need help 24/7, 365, I think it’s a great thing they’ve done here in the United States. So I hope anybody in that situation will take advantage of that 988 number. That’s 988. And you feel in regard to Cobain that this was more than just a regular dream, right? 

Jason (01:24:07):

Because I felt time passed. I remember talking for a long time. I remember him being there with me for what seemed like an hour, and you don’t have that feeling normally in dreams. 

Jim (01:24:20):

That’s true. I mean, typically dreams. I mean, at least for me, I can only speak to myself, but when I have remembrances of dreams, they tend to be short incidents, not long drawn out things. So that’s interesting. You had a third story, right? 

Jason (01:24:39):

Yeah. So the third one, this was what happened to a friend of mine who told me six years ago, and I wanted to bring him onto the show. Either he was going to come on the show or I was talking to him about telling me everything again because he didn’t want to talk to me about it for the past couple years because of what I’m about to tell you. When I talked to him about it four or five years ago, it made things happen in his parents’ house. Every time I talked about it, eight times something would happen in his house like paranormal. And so it started when he was a teenager, he visited his grandparents’ house and they lived with a wooded area in the back, and they told him and his brother, don’t go to the burnt up house. They said it was a witch’s house, but it was partially burned. They went in there and there was a wall and they were messing around with it, and it was a false wall, and it fell over and behind it was a cabinet with a bunch of glass vials, and he took one home that had black liquid in it. 

Jim (01:25:50):

Oh, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. 

Jason (01:25:53):

And he said that he had a dream where it seemed like he was awake, he was levitating  above his bed, and there was black demon dogs that started to jump out of this mirror into this reality over and over. And he was screaming and he was calling his brother, but no one could hear. And then after that paranormal stuff was happening in the house for real, and that was when he was a teenager. But then when he told me that story, things started to happen in his house. One instance was all the cabinets would open in his kitchen. His parents were looking for his brother because he was abusing drugs, and they couldn’t find him, and they would be in bed at night in the dark, and then his voice would come out like mom, dad, and they would wake up and the dog would be startled, and no one was there. And he said that his dad was never a believer in ghosts, that after that he believed he ghosts because of everything that was happening. 

Jim (01:27:07):

Yeah, it’s one of those things where maybe it’s the energies, whatever energies maybe were manifested in another house. And the black vial, I mean, just aside from the supernatural, an unidentified vial of black goo, not a smart thing to bring into your house.

Jason (01:27:27):

From a false wall. He’s just crazy again. Yeah, 

Jim (01:27:30):

So you’re saying… 

Jason (01:27:31):

He said he went and put it back after.

Jim (01:27:32):

Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. So let me ask you this now. So things have started happening to him again now that he’s telling these stories. Is that correct?

Jason (01:27:42):

Yeah, this was five years ago. So things started to happen again. One of the things was, this is crazy. He was in the living room. This only happens in his parents’ house when he visits or when he’s not there. That was the house that he brought the vial into when he was a teenager. And there was in the curtain, in the kitchen, there would be a hand that would just appear and streak down the curtain and just disappear. And that freaked him out. Another time, it was a whole head appeared in the curtain. And he told me when I just started to talk to him last month about telling me the whole story again, he said, oh, you know what actually happened that time was I told everyone to go outside, and I went and got a gun because even though I just saw a head, I just thought, that has to be somebody behind the curtain. That’s not a ghost, that’s a person’s head. So he went and got the gun and he checked the whole house. There was nothing there. He said my nephew saw it too, but I just couldn’t register. That was a ghost. 

Jason (01:28:55):

And 

Jim (01:28:57):

The thing is, is that when you peek into the abyss, sometimes the abyss peaks back. Jason, thank you so much for sharing your stories today. I appreciate it. And thank you for being a part of the Campfire. 

Jason (01:29:09):

Thank you. 

Jim (01:29:10)

Thanks so much for tuning into the Campfire. I certainly appreciate it. And thank you to all of our great storytellers. And if you want to support the shows, there’s a few ways to do it. First of all, support our sponsors because they make our shows possible along with our Plus Club members. And as we mentioned in the episode, please consider joining our Plus Club. You can find that over at jimharoldplus.com, the banner there. And if you’re on Apple Podcasts, you can just search within the Apple Podcast app for my Spooky Studio channel and subscribe to the Plus Club right there and get all the back catalog of the Campfire. 

Jim (01:29:53):

Also, please check out the free podcast I mentioned earlier “Unpleasant Dreams” with my daughter Cassandra, and “You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me”. We just released a new episode of that one, and that’s the one I do with my wife, Dar Harold. And one thing that I forgot to mention, which might be the most important, is the idea of sharing the show. I look at some of the podcasts, the top of the charts, and there’s certainly some great ones, and then there’s some, I have to be honest, I think to myself, I think the Campfire’s better. So we don’t have those big marketing budgets, those huge radio conglomerates and big companies, but we do have you. So as we get onto the push to Halloween, please share this show every episode. Please share it with one friend online or offline. That means so much. So we’re going to continue to ask that as we run up to the great Halloween season. And we thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everyone. Stay safe and Stay Spooky. Bye-bye. 

Announcer 1 (01:30:58):

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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